University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons
Theses (Historic Preservation) Graduate Program in Historic Preservation
2015
Historical Layering and Historic Preservation in Relation to Urban Planning and Protecting Local Identity: City Study of Nanjing
Mengjia Wang University of Pennsylvania
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Wang, Mengjia, "Historical Layering and Historic Preservation in Relation to Urban Planning and Protecting Local Identity: City Study of Nanjing" (2015). Theses (Historic Preservation). 580. https://repository.upenn.edu/hp_theses/580
Suggested Citation: Wang, Mengjia (2015). Historical Layering and Historic Preservation in Relation to Urban Planning and Protecting Local Identity: City Study of Nanjing. (Masters Thesis). University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.
This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/hp_theses/580 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Historical Layering and Historic Preservation in Relation to Urban Planning and Protecting Local Identity: City Study of Nanjing
Abstract After 1980s, the People’s Republic of China modernized rapidly, resulting in vast changes to the fabric of cities. At the same time, China developed more sophisticated urban planning practices and historic preservation regulation. In 1982, the government officially eatedcr the concept of “predominant historic and cultural city,” for cities that are considered to have very significant historic and cultural values. Cities with such distinctive and important identity should be protected as a whole, not only through preservation movements but through systematic urban planning processes. However, historic preservation and urban planning sometimes are often considered to be antithetical, and accommodating both preservation and planning in order to achieve the goal of protecting local identity has become a question demanding further examination.
This thesis looks specifically into the case of Nanjing. As a capital of six imperial dynasties throughout the history and a metropolitan city today, Nanjing was among the first ot be listed as predominant historic and cultural cities in 1982, but it is also experiencing modernization accompanying with dramatic construction and destruction. By researching on the formation of different development phases, reading different types of historic layering, and comprehending the contemporary preservation and planning approaches, this thesis aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the urban evolution of Nanjing, and discover the possible ways to better connect historic preservation with urban planning, which could potentially be further applied to other cities.
Keywords Nanjing, historic preservation, urban planning, historic layering, local identity
Disciplines Chinese Studies | Historic Preservation and Conservation | Urban, Community and Regional Planning | Urban Studies and Planning
Comments Suggested Citation:
Wang, Mengjia (2015). Historical Layering and Historic Preservation in Relation to Urban Planning and Protecting Local Identity: City Study of Nanjing. (Masters Thesis). University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.
This thesis or dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/hp_theses/580 HISTORICAL LAYERING AND HISTORIC PRESERVATION IN RELATION TO URBAN PLANNING AND PROTECTING LOCAL IDENTITY: CITY STUDY OF NANJING
Mengjia Wang
A THESIS
in
Historic Preservation
Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements of the Degree of
MASTER OF SCIENCE IN HISTORIC PRESERVATION
2015
______Advisor and Program Chair, Historic Preservation Randall F. Mason Associate Professor
To My Family, Especially My Parents and Grandparents
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Acknowledgement
This thesis is developed out of my long interest in preservation issues in contemporary Chinese cities. My hometown Nanjing has offered rich inspiration to settle down my thesis concept. The research is challenging but very interesting, and it also becomes another great way of learning.
In addition, many people have contributed to the completion of this thesis and I would like express my sincere gratitude for everyone who has helped:
First of all I would like to thank my thesis advisor Professor Randall Mason, who not only generously offers helpful advices and shares his knowledgeable information, but also patiently listens to my ideas and responds to my concerns.
Also I am grateful for all the professors who have taught me during the two years’ learning, my schoolmates who we have studied together, as well as my friends who always care and encourage me.
Lastly, I would like to give my special thanks to my parents, for their support, encouragement and love.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgement …………………………………………….…………………… iii
List of Figures and Illustrations ……………………………….…………………. vi
Chapter 1: Introduction ………..…………………………………………….……. 1 1.1 City ….………………………………………………………………….…….... 2 1.2 Nanjing as Research Subject ...………………………………………….……... 5 1.3 Historic Preservation and Urban Planning ……………………………....….…. 9
Chapter 2: Context and Methodology ...…………………………...…….………..13 2.1 Research Context ...……………….…………………………………………... 13 2.2 Methodology …………………………………………………………...……... 14 2.3 Limitation …………………………………………………………………...… 17
Chapter 3: Literature Review ….……………………………………...…………. 19 3.1 General City Planning History of China …………………………...…………. 19 3.1.1 Ancient City Planning 3.1.2 Contemporary City Planning 3.1.3 General History of City Development 3.2 City Planning History of Nanjing …………………………………….…...... … 25 3.2.1 Overall History Planning 3.2.2 Other Studies 3.3 Beijing as a Comparing Example ……….……………………………...……... 30 3.3.1 Urban Planning History of Beijing 3.3.2 Preservation Plan of Beijing 3.4 City Memory …………………………………………………….………...….. 33 3.5 Historic Preservation and Urban Planning ………………………….……..….. 35 3.6 Summary of Literature Review ……………………………………….…...….. 38
Chapter 4: Historical Development of Nanjing as a City …………………..…... 40 4.1 Ancient Chinese City Development ……………………………….………..… 40 4.2 Imperial City Planning ………………………………………………..…...….. 44 4.3 The Historic City Fabric Development of Nanjing ……………………..…….. 46
Chapter 5: Modern Urban Planning of Nanjing …………………………..……. 51 5.1 Contemporary City Planning History ………………………………….....…… 51 iv
5.2 Urban Planning History of Nanjing …………………………………….…….. 52
Chapter 6: Comparables …………………………………………………….…… 65 6.1 Beijing ………………………………………………….……………………... 65 6.2 Seoul, South Korea ………………………………….....……………………... 69 6.3 Summary of Lessons ……………….………………………………….……… 76
Chapter 7: Understanding of Contemporary Nanjing and Historical Layering ……………………………………………………………….. 78 7.1 Nanjing as a Historical City ………………………………………………...… 78 7.2 Nanjing as a Historical Imperial City …………………………………...……. 80 7.3 Cotemporary City Planning of Nanjing ………………………………………. 81 7.4 Historic Layering …………………………………………………...………… 83
Chapter 8: Discussion ………………………………..………………………….. 101 8.1 Values of the Ancient and Contemporary City Fabric ………..………....…… 101 8.1.1 City through the process of development 8.1.2 City as a Collective Memory 8.2 Values and Limitation of Preservation and Urban Planning …….…………… 110 8.2.1 Historic Preservation 8.2.2 Urban Planning 8.2.3 Potential Problems and Conflict 8.3 Intangible Cultural Landscape ……………………………………………….. 117 8.3.1 Public Media 8.3.2 Approaching Dark History 8.4 How to Connect Preservation with Planning ……………………...…..…….. 124 8.4.1 Realization of the limitations 8.4.2 Dynamic Evolution of the City’s Fabric 8.4.3 Relationship between Historic Preservation and Urban Planning 8.5 Recommendations ………………………..………………………..………… 130
Bibliography …………………………………………………………………...… 135
Appendix …………………………………………………………………………. 143
Index ……………………………………………………………………………… 151
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List of Figures and Illustration
Figure 1-1:
1940s Bird’s Eye View of Chao Tian Gong (朝天宫), the Confucius’s Temple …….. 8
Figure 1-2:
Contemporary Bird’s Eye view of Chao Tian Gong, the Confucius’s Temple ……… 9
Figure 4-1: Imperial Cities of different periods in Nanjing …...…………………... 50
Figure 5-1: Diagram of original City Wall ………………...………………………. 53
Figure 5-2: Diagram of Today’s City Wall ………...………………………………. 54
Figure 5-3: 1910 Nanjing Map ……………...……………………………………... 56
Figure 5-4: Diagram of planned Nanjing road system …………...………………... 57
Figure 5-5: Diagram of constructed boulevards on 1946 Nanjing map ……...……. 58
Figure 5-6:
Diagram of spatial division of major city (red), metropolis (orange) and administrative region (green) ………………………………………………………………………. 61
Figure 6-1: The 2004-2020 Master Plan Diagram of Center City functionality …... 67
Figure 6-2: Historic map of Seoul ……………………...………………………….. 72
Figure 6-3:
Seoul 2030 Plan Diagram on Recovery and Strengthen of Seoul’s Identity ………...76
Figure 7-1: Paleolithic Sites ……………………………………………………….. 84
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Figure 7-2: Neolithic Sites ………………………………………………………… 85
Figure 7-3: Shang & Zhou Dynasties Sites ……...………………………………… 86
Figure 7-4: Han Dynasty Sites ……...……………………………………………... 87
Figure 7-5: Six Dynasties Sites ……...…………………………………………….. 87
Figure 7-6: Tang Dynasty Sites ………………………...………………………….. 89
Figure 7-7: Five Dynasties Sites …………………………………………………... 90
Figure 7-8: Song Dynasty Sites ……………………………………………………. 91
Figure 7-9: Yuan Dynasty Sites ……………………………………………………. 92
Figure 7-10: Ming Dynasty Sites ………………………………………………….. 93
Figure 7-11: Qing Dynasty Sites …………………………………………………... 94
Figure 7-12: Republic Period Sites ………………………………………………... 95
Figure 7-13: Modern Era (People’s Republic of China) Sites …………………….. 96
Figure 7-14:
The historic housing at Lingzhuang Xiang with demolition imprint ……..………. 100
Figure 8-1: The Guanghua Gate of Nanjing was bombed by Japanese army ……. 123
Figure 8-2:
On December 12th, 1937, the sixth division of Japanese army broke into the line of defense at Zhonghua Gate, and on the wall hangs the slogan of “faith to revenge for the country ………………………………………………………………………… 124
Figure A-1: Southern Tang Jiangning Fu (Nanjing Historic Name) Map ………... 143
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Figure A-2: Song Dynasty Jian Kang (Nanjing’s historic name) Map …………... 144
Figure A-3: Yuan Dynasty Nanjing Map …………………………………………. 144
Figure A-4: 1898 Nanjing Map ………...………………………………………… 145
Figure A-5: 1910 Nanjing Map …………………………………………………... 146
Figure A-6: 1936 Nanjing Map …………………………………………………... 147
Figure A-7: 1946 Nanjing Map …………………………………………………... 148
Figure A-8: Historic Nanjing ……………………………………………………... 149
Figure A-9: Present Nanjing ……………………………………………………… 150
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Chapter 1: Introduction
Nowadays people talk more and more about the idea of cultural identity in China.
This phenomenon is more or less a result of rapid modernization and globalization, which
some people see as a threat of losing local characteristics and memories. Modernization
brings wider roads, heavier traffic, illimitable urban sprawl, and replacement of original
traditional housing, which are seen by some people as extensive cultural erasure.1
Globalization is also believed to be one of the factors potentially accelerating this erasure of places’ individual identities: people describe their experiences that all the buildings in different cities and countries look about the same, and all the central commercial areas of different places are occupied by similar, internationally branded restaurants or shops.
These issues may be even more severe in places of China. Most of the metropolitan cities in China have been developed to their current enormous scale in only a few decades. The country is modernizing so fast that the erasure process is much more rapid than that of western countries. What has been lost in time can hardly be retraced, but this rapid erasure process raises public’s awareness to preserve the remaining cultural heritage and this is the point where historic preservation can actually be involved and help.
Furthermore, this awareness of discovering and preserving local identity is also widely discussed in the academic research context of a variety of fields, which sets the beginning point of this research paper. Identity preservation of a place cannot be achieved without
1 Zhang Song, An Introduction to Integrated Conservation: A Way For the Protection of Culture Heritage and Historic Environment (Shanghai: Shanghai Scientific and Technical Publishers, 2001), 1. 1
the thorough comprehension on two different aspects of cities and urbanism: first is the complete understanding of the city’s historic and cultural characteristics; and second is how to apply the understanding to actual practices. The understanding of places’ characteristics answers the question of “what identity a place has,” and it is based on the interpretation of the development of the city’s fabric, and the formation of the heritage resources. The thinking about application to reality answers the question of “how to preserve identity,” and it is based on the examination and evaluation of existing practices and efforts, and how to directly link places’ administrative and planning strategies.
Therefore, this research is not only trying to discuss the idea of local identity, but also tries to provide a scope in order to answer these two “what” and “how” questions.
1.1 City
In order to further examine the idea about establishment of local identity, it is important to choose a clear subject, so the entire discussion does not float in the air with no supporting informational foundation. And “city” is often used as the basic unit to discuss. There are several reasons for using city as the studying subject: first it is the unit that holds a denser population, which therefore has a stronger sense of settlement; second, it is the gathering place for different cultures; and usually results in richer heritage resources; third, cities are well defined as administrative units with clear boundaries. In
2
addition cities, according to Lewis Mumford, have a specific dimension of timeliness.2
And the sedimentation of time would be reflected on the built environment through slow, dense accumulation of construction, which can only be densely observed in an urban context.3 As a result, this paper will examine the city under the context of China.
Before going on to talk about using city to comprehend local identity through
historic preservation and urban planning, the first question people may encounter is what
a “city” is. People in fact may seldom notice that we may have different definitions
toward the idea of a “city”. According to the Webster dictionary, a city is “an inhabited
place of greater size, population, or importance than a town or village”.4 However, since
this paper is mainly discussing the city in China, the meaning of the “city” in Chinese
language also needs to be examined. In Chinese, city is composed by two Chinese
characters “Cheng(城)” and “Shi（市）”. “Cheng” refers to place where people are gathered, and “Shi” stands for market. Therefore, the literal comprehension of Chinese city is the place that has both large groups of residents and markets for commercial activities. Of course, in contemporary China or even in other countries nowadays, people envision a more political definition toward “city”, as it is often used as a primary administrative division. 5 Therefore, even though people may all have the general impression of city as a place that has large population density, the idea of “city” has
2 Lewis Mumford, The Culture of Cities (Beijing: China Architectural Industry Press, 2004), 17. 3 Sze Tsung Leong, History Images (Göttingen: Steidl, 2006), 138. 4 Webster, “City,” Web. 1 May 2015. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/city. 5 Rober Beven, “What makes a City a City.” Web. 1 May 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/may/08/what-makes-city-tech-garden-smart-redefine. 3
slowly transformed through history.6 The existence of markets in order to change goods
used to be one of the most important criteria for city, but of course nowadays it is not
really crucial or rather is not as concentrated anymore. This switch in meaning starts to show a gap between past and present. Not only the meaning of the word “city” is constantly changing, so is the form of the city. Cities may expand or shrink in different stages of history, and it ends up with different historic layering in the city just like different layers of soil has formed underground through time. Nonetheless, when talking about historic layering, cities are not simply an aggregation of different built environments, as it also involves people and other intangible factors like societal activities and cultural habits. Important social and cultural events leave important landmarks or traces on the fabric of the city which later recognized as cultural heritage.
Heritage is different from history as it is close related with people’s memory. Heritage can exaggerate and omit, invent and forget, and it tells historical tales but does not require the historic accuracy.7 People may have to recite history, but memory of certain events
can be imprinted in people’s mind and in social consciousness. Even though some of it does not necessary becomes a tangible part of the urban fabric, a few part can still be transformed into heritage and become a factor of forming local identity. As a result, the city itself is a very complicated system and it produces heritages by the continuation and transformation. Thus, the mechanism of memorization and conservation of heritage is
6 Tiezhen Zhang, “Definition and Origin of Cities,“ Web. 1 May 2015. http://www.chinacity.org.cn/cstj/zjwz/52530.html?WebShieldSessionVerify=4QCRcnAKGonRtigwAqRL. 7 David Lowenthal, “Fabricating Heritage,“ History and Memory 10.1 (1998): 7. 4
also continuously embedded in city and is am inalienable part of a city’s identity.
Furthermore, the heritage helps to create distinctive character of a city, but this sense of
uniqueness is also slowly lost in this competence.8 All of this approves that it is crucial
to rethink the role of urban heritage preservation in relationship with urban planning in
order to maintain a city’s memory.9
1.2 Nanjing as Research Subject
The rich history of China has resulted in countless cities rich in history, and many of the cities still actively play important role in today’s society. Nanjing (南京) is one of
such cities. It is located in the east region of China. The English of spelling of Nanjing
sometimes also appears as Nankin or Nanking. The city has a long history and has served
as the capital for six different dynasties. The city’s rich history contributes to the
formation of today’s Nanjing and makes it into a predominant historic and cultural city.
Today it is the capital of Jiangsu Province and serves as the important cultural, political
and economic center of the province. Through the development in the recent decades,
Nanjing became a metropolis that covers 6598 square kilometers of land and with a population of eight millions. The size of Nanjing can compete with many global cities in the world. Whereas, this conception is slightly different if look at the context of Chinese
8 Junhua Xu,“Analysis on the Modernization of Cities and the Protection of Cultural Heritage,“ Web. 1 May 2015. http://big.hi138.com/gongxue/gongchengjianzhu/201008/253287.asp#.VUPv3_ldVbR. 9 Ibid. 5
urban development. China ranks the cities over five million population as megacities.10
With a population of eight million, Nanjing is the only megacity in the Jiangsu Province.
Besides the population division, there is also another ranking method that is evaluating based on cities’ comprehensive powers. The most powerful cities are called first-tier cities which include Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou.11 Nanjing, however,
is overpowering by the influence of Shanghai and is considering as 1.5-tier city.12
Nanjing is chosen as the research subject based on two reasons. First its long and
winding history provides rich historic layering, as each dynasty would leave different
historic traces in the urban fabric. Second, Nanjing is also a city that has suffered with
destruction and dark memory, both in the ancient times and in the 20th century. And by examining both building and destroying process of a city, a more compressive understanding could be reached. In addition, Nanjing is also a city that is changing rapidly in this globalized context and contemporary urban planning processes. For example, Confucius’s Temple is one of the most important landmarks in Nanjing, and there are many traditional houses built around it (Figure 1-1). However, when the city is facing development opportunities and population increasing, many traditional housing districts are replaced with high rise buildings (Figure 1-2). Confucius’s Temple has remained unchanged, but the atmosphere or the characteristic of that district has been
10 Feifei Yue, “The New Standard for the City Rankings“ Web. 1 May 2015. http://news.qq.com/a/20141121/004111.htm. 11 Xin Wang, “Jones Lang LaSalle Anounced the Top 60 Cities in China,“ Web. 1 May 2015. http://news.xinhuanet.com/house/nj/2015-04-14/c_1114968276.htm. 12 Ibid. 6
changed dramatically. Other historic sites or other vernacular residential neighborhoods have also change rapidly. Especially after 1970s while the idea of modernization and materialism has burst out, some historic sites are torn down for modern housings and some districts has gone through large scale revitalization which also resulted in destruction and reconstruction.13 After 1980s the theories of modern historic preservation has been introduced into the city and the goal of protecting Nanjing as a “predominant historical and cultural city” has since always been mentioned in related documents, including urban planning master plans. People never doubt the historic values of Nanjing, and the government always has the willing to balancing preservation and planning.
However, if looking more closely, it is not hard to notice that the development is still a more prioritized goal in the planning process and the ideal balance has not yet reached.
This paper then, will work within the context of Nanjing in order to further discuss the issues of local identity and balancing preservation with urban planning.
In addition, since only one city is targeted by this research, this thesis should be considered as a city study on Nanjing, focusing on the perspective of both historic preservation and urban planning. By focusing on one city there is a larger possibility to really expose some pragmatic issues and question and avoid over generalizing the topic.
13 Yang Weize,“Nanjing Announced 11 Regulation of Heritage Planning,“ Web. 1 May 2015. http://js.xhby.net/system/2014/03/01/020410276.shtml. 7
Figure 1-1: 1940s Bird’s Eye View of Chao Tian Gong (朝天宫), the Confucius’s
Temple14
14 Chi Chu, Nanking Album (Shanghai: the Commercial Press, 1936), 36. 8
Figure 1-2: Contemporary Bird’s Eye view of Chao Tian Gong, the Confucius’s Temple15
1.3 Historic Preservation and Urban Planning
People may think the practices of historic preservation usually focus on a
case-by-case or a site-by-site scale, as a larger effort have been put to protect the historic
structures and other built environment properties.16 However this is not always the case.
Preservation could actually be practiced on all different scales, and when people start to
think about how to preserve a city’s identify, it is unavoidable to mention the idea of
preservation planning. Preservation planning, which also known as heritage is planning,
15 JSChina, “The Ancient Building Group: Chaotian Palace,” Web. 1 May 2015. http://tour.jschina.com.cn/node4035/chaotiangong/node6631/userobject1ai1719047.html. 16 Norman Tyler, Historic Preservation: An Introduction to Its History, Principles, and Practices (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2009), 11. 9
is the application of heritage conservation within the context of planning and therefore is
considered as a sub-discipline of both heritage conservation and urban planning.17 A
good preservation plan could possibly “strengthen the integration of historic preservation
into the broader public policy and land-use planning and decision-making arenas at the
federal, state, tribal, and local levels”.18 It is not hard to tell that preservation planning is the key that would turn the understanding of local identity into practices and it also directly impacts the larger scale urban planning processes. Preservation planning therefore has the potential to integrate historic preservation and urban planning, even though this sense of integration actually indicates a potential discrepancy between the practices of historic preservation and urban planning. The ultimate conflict is that city planners and preservationists sometimes have different goals.19 Historic preservation is
always looking into the past and preserving what is ancient and historical, while urban
planning is always looking forward into the future and work with present condition.
Therefore, people usually consider them as two separate and opposing fields. As it comes
to the 21st century, while the collaboration between different fields becomes more or less
a trend, many people start to realize the myth of this discrepancy between historic
preservation and urban planning and think about the idea to integrate these two fields in
order to create a smooth transition between past, present, and future. Historic
preservation cannot only focus on the study of past without facing the present condition;
17 Harold Kalman, Heritage Planning: Principles and Process (New York: Routledge, 2014), 4. 18 National Park Service. “Historic Preservation Planning Program,” Web. 1 May 2015. http://www.nps.gov/preservation-planning/. 19 Norman Tyler, 269. 10
urban planning cannot move forward without a full understanding of the city’s history.
This thesis, as a result, is trying to look into this idea of balancing historic preservation
and urban planning by using the city study of Nanjing as a context. Moreover, as
mentioned before, both practices of historic preservation and urban planning are crucial in the maintaining and strengthening local identities. At the same time, however, it has to come to full awareness that preservation and planning are not two isolated terms or fields,
and their meanings sometimes overlap with each other. For example, the city fabric
created by urban planning in many cities like Paris and Barcelona now also become
important preservation targets, and well-preserved districts in many large cities serve as a
support or amenity for development.
This subtle dialectical relationship between preservation and planning will also be
further discussed in the following paragraphs: Chapter 2 includes a review of the context
and methodology of the thesis, which set up the entire frame and scope. Also this chapter
talks about the limitation of this research which hopefully could generate further
discussion in the future. Chapter 3 is the literature review section which examines the
existing academic resources that are on or related to the research topic. Following the
literature review, Chapter 4 starts to look back into the development history of Nanjing,
and Chapter 5 looks at the contemporary urban planning processes of Nanjing. Chapter 6
jumps out of the context of Nanjing by adding two comparables: Beijing and Seoul,
which provide references and lessons for the preservation practices in Nanjing. Based on
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the understanding of the historical background and contemporary urban planning approaches, Chapter 7 begins to integrate these two and looks into the contemporary
Nanjing. Chapter 8 rounds up everything and looks back at the idea of connecting
preservation with urban planning by providing a series of possible recommendations at
the end.
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Chapter 2: Context & Methodology
2.1 Ancient versus contemporary
Since the two words “ancient” and “contemporary” will be kept mentioning in the
following paragraphs, one of the issues that have to be paid attention to first is the
definition of them. The division between modern and ancient is difficult, as it varies in
different context. Under the context of Chinese History, some of the people would use the year 1949 as a dividing line, since it is the time that the current China has founded and the idea of modernization has really started to be implemented seriously. However, this
will bring another question: how to define modernization? China has been influenced by
western cultures far beyond 1949, even though the modernization has not been practiced
thoroughly on all societal levels. Some of the people would use the Qing Dynasty or the
Republic China period as a division because it is the time that China started to open up and take over Western scholars’ ideas. Nonetheless, the influence of west, as I mentioned
before, has occurred way before that. None of these are incorrect by any means, as they
are all based on different context and are needed to support the scholars’ ideas. For this
thesis, however, I find out that these divisions are too specific and are not very proper to
use in the context I try to create. Instead of referring to a specific period or year at the
first place, I choose to use “ancient” and “contemporary” to stand for two city planning theories. If looking at the history of the cities’ development in China, two different
theories have been practiced. One is a city planning theory that has been developed
13
throughout the history of China, and the other one is the theory based on the model of western countries that has just started to be practiced in Chinese cities since the Republic
China period. Even though it seems that there is a time division before and after the
Republic China, the idea of an exact time is not considered as a dominant feature in this research. Moreover, though Republic China as a beginning time for adopting western planning theories is a general phenomenon for most of the major cities in China including
Nanjing, there are still exceptions.
2.2 Methodology
The previous context provides a base to develop the structure of this research. The thesis is divided into five main parts:
1) The historical development of Nanjing as a city;
2) The modern urban planning process of Nanjing;
3) Comparables;
4) Contemporary Nanjing and historical layering;
5) The discussion on how to integrate preservation and urban planning.
The thesis organizes around the idea of city study and directly responds to the context of Nanjing. At the same time, if focusing on the in-depth study on individual city, there is a danger of ignoring the possibility of integrating findings into a more general
14
context.20 Hence, besides answering the research questions in the context of Nanjing, a
more general planning overview is also included into the research. Therefore, not only
how Nanjing is developed as an individual city can be examined, it is also doable to
consider Nanjing from a regional scale. Moreover, this thesis is focusing on Nanjing based on the reasons demonstrated in the first chapter, but looking at the history of
Nanjing would limit the scope and fail to come up with practical suggestions. Thus two comparable case studies: Beijing and Seoul are also incorporated into this research, and the planning and preservation practices adopted by these two cities could be used as reference.
By careful study of Nanjing, this thesis tries to answer three questions: First question is what mechanism is used to develop Nanjing into its current forms and how many historic layers are added on through history; second is what are the modern planning theories and preservation policies have been adopted in Nanjing, and the third question is how to integrate historical layering and preservation into present’s planning practices. Answering the first question involves analyzing a series of primary historical resources include ancient written history and secondary sources including scholars’ related books and articles to trace the historical development of Nanjing. In addition, in order to visually represent this layering process, historical maps are also looked. Though historic analysis, the significance of the preservation values of different parts of the city
20 Jianjun Huang, Research on China Ancient Capitals Selection and Local Planning Layout Thinking (Xiamen: Xiamen University Press, 2005), 7. 15
fabric would be able to determine. Responding to the second question, the urban planning and preservation movements and processes are studied through reviewing related policy and regulation documents. In addition to that, scholars’ books and articles are also used.
After the complete navigation of the first and second questions, the overlaps and gaps between preservation and planning actions, historic heritage and modern urban form could be revealed and the response toward the third question would be bale to capture.
Supplementing on that, a mapping analysis is also accomplished by mapping registered historic sites of Nanjing. The mapping analysis aims to support the idea of historic layering and put the historic heritage in the context of metropolitan Nanjing today.
Throughout the thesis, different resources that are used to accomplish the city study of Nanjing in order to create a more comprehensive discussion. The materials examined include scholars’ articles and books, historic maps, photos, documents, news, etc. As mentioned before, people’s memory and narratives are also an important layer to form a city’s characteristic. As a result, some subjective materials like blog posting from public media and written travel prose are also included into the discussion. However, this division of subjective and objective is arguable as some people thinks that so-called objective historical material like photography or written history is actually a more subjective motion. Therefore, the words subjective and objective is only used a generally division of used materials. The thesis would not address this debate as the main purpose of adopting a variety or resources is to create a more diverse discussion.
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2.3 Limitation
At the same time, this research paper still has certain limitations. First is that this
research paper would not be able to cover all the aspects of Nanjing. The more you dig
into the subject, the more information will be exposed. The formation of a city, especially
a historical one is a complicated process, and the study of it could potentially involve
studies in all different fields like history, geography, archeology, architecture, planning,
environmental studies, culture, philosophy, aesthetics, fold custom, astronomy, etc.21
Even though all different resources are more or less sorted, but besides the primary information that is used, there is a large percentage of information used are secondary research. Different scholars’ and writers’ works are important, but the different opinions cannot be avoided. Also, the cut-in point of this research is still based on historic preservation and urban planning. Therefore, even this paper tries to provide a more critical and comprehensive understanding of Nanjing, the opinions and information that are more or less sorted out as the majority scholars’ works come from archeological, history, planning, and preservation fields. This may eventually expose certain narrowness of views. Second is that the study of one city may also have limitation and is less convincing to apply on a general level. In the end the potential integration between historic preservation and urban planning is discussed, but this discussion is purely based on the city study of Nanjing. It is true that each city would have its own uniqueness and
21 Jianjun Huang, Research on China Ancient Capitals Selection and Local Planning Layout Thinking, 7. 17
Nanjing cannot be directly used as a prototype. However, the idea to study only one city
does not have intent to use Nanjing as a prototype, but to avoid the danger of over
generalization by doing a series of cities. By reviewing only one specific city, there
would be larger chance to create a more depth study and dig out some potential
discussion that is not doable on a larger scale. But then again, it is said by a photographer
Diane Arbus that the more specific, the general pattern it may potentially reveal.22
Therefore, with the awareness of the existing limitation of this research, some of the ideas that are composed here may still be interpreted on a larger scale. In addition, even though efforts are put to narrow the research fields and subject down, this topic itself is still a very broad and multidisciplinary one and comprehending the past from today’s perspective is difficult. The time limitation restrict a more in depth study. Most part of the research is examined constantly on a city scale, and it would be great if more the study on the scale of community, district and region.
22 Diane Arbus, Diane Arbus (Millerton: Aperture, 1972), 1. 18
Chapter 3: Literature Review
The literature review is based on the planed structure and the goal of thesis, which
therefore is composed of five parts:
1) Analysis of historical layering and planning;
2) Analysis of current urban planning processes and strategies;
3) Discussion on the integration of preservation with urban planning process, and this process helps to raise some research questions that need to be focused on in the later research;
4) Collective memory;
5) Connection between historic preservation and urban planning.
3.1 General City Planning History of China
There are many books that talk about the history of city planning in China.
Instead of focusing on one single city, this type of book tries to emphasize on the general
flow of city development and each individual city is considered as one piece to form a
complete development pattern of China.
3.1.1 Ancient City Planning
Most of the books that talked about the ancient city planning theories followed a
chronological order. One of the books written by Yeju He named Symposium on History
19
of the Ancient Chinese Cities is such a typical book. The books started from the Western
Zhou dynasty around 11th century B.C., which was the time when China has roughly
formed a system about city planning.23 Then the narrative went on till Song Dynasty. In
the discussion part at the end of the book, the author also mentioned about how this idea
of planning theory in relation with the rehabilitation of old city in the contemporary
context.24 This book did not cover the entire period of history when the ancient Chinese
city planning theory was used, also it did not go in depth about the contemporary
preservation issues. Nonetheless, this book provided an introductory historical base for
people to look into the city planning history. Also since Yeju He is a specialist in urban planning, many contemporary planning terminologies are used to read into the ancient city planning pattern, which is a special way to link the past with present.25 Later the
same author has written another book named History of the Ancient Chinese Cities which covered a longer time period: from West Zhou to Qing Dynasty. Using a more different structure, this time the book was divided up into three parts and each division was considered as switch point on the form of cities.26 For each part, the society background, the trend and characteristics for city planning at that time was carefully studied.27 Also since this book covered a longer period of history, it also looked into the city Nanjing during the Ming dynasty in more details, as it was one of the representative cities in the
23 Yeju He. Symposium on History of the Ancient Chinese Cities (Beijing: China Architecture and Building Press, 1986), 2. 24 Ibid. 25 Jianjun Huang, Research on China Ancient Capitals Selection and Local Planning Layout Thinking, 2. 26 Yeju He, History of the Ancient Chinese Cities (Beijing: China Architecture and Building Press, 1996), 26. 27 Ibid. 20
third part. Both of He’s books took a more generalized approach and tried to catch a
larger trend instead of focusing on certain detailed aspects.
There are also exceptions in this type of books. One of such books was written by
Jianjun Huang, and it tried to emphasize the idea of “site selection” in the process of
choosing ancient capitals. The practicing of geomancy (fengshui), which was not highly
emphasized or selectively ignored in most works, was re-discussed in this book.28
Another book was written Jun Wang, and it mainly targets on the discussion of the relationship of imperial cities construction in relationship with the nature, as the author believes the geographical environment plays significant roles in the ancient city planning.29 Overall, all the books affirmed the adoption of ideas of “Zhou Li” and “Guan
Zi”. Also all the books mentioned the importance of putting palaces as centers to orient all the different other features in order to create a strict hierarchy in the society.
3.1.2 Contemporary City Planning
The books and articles on the contemporary city planning also followed a chronological order; while at the same time, they had a more academic analytical structure. For example, in the book Reconstructing China, the Thirty Year of City
Planning 1949-1979, the author tried to provide the definition of city planning at first: as city planning was a conscious and disciplinary creation on the built environment, and it is
28 Jianjun Huang, Research on China Ancient Capitals Selection and Local Planning Layout Thinking, 9. 29 Jun Wang, Construction of the Ancient Capitals and Natural Change (Xi’an: Xi’an Map Press, 2003), 4. 21
an activity that involved with the overall environment of society, economy, geography
and history.30 Instead of only focusing on the year between 1949 and 1979, the book also first gave a quick review of previous history, then it started to explain the societal situation of China during 1949- 1979. The author believed that without an understanding of the condition of the nation, people and land, the understanding of urban planning history would never be achieved.31 After all of this contextual information, the author
officially started his narrative on the history of city planning during these thirty years after the foundation of People’s Republic of China. Besides, the author also mentioned some interesting points that worth thinking. First was the idea that people should reconsider the complete adoption of western ideas. “Who had never heard about
Champs-Élysées, but its times has already passed”.32 By saying this, the author tried to
point out that copying westerner’s ideas will not work any more. This statement is also
applicable for historic preservation, as it is important to look in a more skeptical way
toward the fully adoption of certain international theories into Chinese context. Second point was about how to preserve traditional houses. The author used the traditional houses in Beijing as an example: the one single courtyard used to be occupied by one wealthy family in the past and now it was occupied by ten to fifteen families.33 While the
budget for rehabilitating or facility updating was too high, the only practical way was to
preserve the valuable ones with good condition and gave up the ones that have less
30 Leon Hoa, Reconstructing China, the Thirty Year of City Planning 1949-1979 (Beijing: Bookstore, 2006), 1. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid. 22
value.34 Of course this point will be considered as too aggressive from the historic
preservation field, as even the ones that of worse condition would still have value.
Whereas, the most precious point is that the author neither walked away from this
situation nor tried to propose it in a blurry conservative way. The third point was that how
rapid the change had taken place after 1979. In the article, the author mentioned the wide
spread of Chinese medicinal herb stores and the recycling stations.35 In the year of 2014,
however, both of them can hardly been observed on streets. This rapid transfer is
something that was experienced during 1949-1979, and will be kept happening in the
future. As a result, how preservation could cooperate with this change would be very
crucial to consider.
Another book about the contemporary city planning in China is a collection of
different articles written by different scholars in Urban Planning Society of China.
Among all the different articles, there was only one article that talked about historic
preservation: Preservation Tradition and Characteristics of Famous Historic Cities and
the Preservation of Their Styles and Features, which is written by Xiaoxie Zheng. In this article, author talked about several important features that should be noticed during the
process of preserving historic cities: preserving historic relics by emphasizing the historical and aesthetic values was the central point of city preservation; preserving the relics should emphasize both its physical and spiritual aspects, while also make it
34 Leon Hoa, Reconstructing China, the Thirty Year of City Planning 1949-1979, 1. 35 Ibid. 23
beneficial; the balance between exterior and interior, and it relation with the environment
were important; the properties and scale of cities, the industrial development, layout of
land use, and environmental protection were also very crucial. 36 Overall I think preservation is not the major trend at that time since only one article was directly talking about preservation, and even the article about the implementation of the Shanghai city plan did not mention preservation at all. However, if thinking from another perspective, this book was published in 1999 and it would be understandable that preservation was actually not that heavily discussed at that time. Beside that, I think the article wrote by
Xiaoxie Zheng is very important, as it showed that scholars had already started to think about the preservation of historic cities and also noticed its tight relationship with the
city’s overall development.
3.1.3 General History of City Development
There are also some scholar works that uses a different vision to picture the
development of individual city. One of the books was a collection of city studies named
City in Late Imperial China. Thirteen papers are included in the book and these papers
look at the morphology of a specific imperial Chinese city in terms of history, space and
social system.37 There is another book written by Linde Zhuang and Jingxiang Zhang
that does not fall into any of the category above, so it was listed in here separately. This is
36 Urban Planning Society of China. Looking at the Past Fifty Years: New China City Planning (Beijing: Commercial Press, 1999). 37 William Skinner, The City in Late Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1977), 3. 24
a book that did not specifically follow a chronological order, and at the same time the
book raised some new ideas. First, since the book talked about the development of cities
instead of city planning, the authors were able to put the entire process into a broader
context. Instead of using the contextual information to prove the planning theories at each
period, the authors believed that the form of the cities could reflect the societal
development of the nation.38 Second was the emphasis on the political and military
influences. Though the previous books also mentioned how political or military events
affect the formation of cities, this book directly pointed out that they are the major factors
to change the shape of a city.39 Third, the book mentioned there was a periodically
development as the cities always followed a curved pattern of
“development-decline-destruction-recover-development-decline”.40 This point was very
important as it raised a general pattern of cultural development. There is no such a culture
or a city that could keep flourishing throughout the history. Therefore, historic preservation and city planning should not only focus on how to develop “more”, but also how to move forward during “decline” phase.
3.2 City Planning History of Nanjing
3.2.1 Overall History Planning
The books that talked about the city planning of Nanjing tend to focus on certain
38 Delin Zhuang, and Jingxiang Zhang, Development and Construction History of Chinese Cities (Nanjing: Southeast University Press, 2002), 6. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid. 25
specific area or field and Zemin Su’s book is the only one that covers the generally
history of the city planning history in Nanjing. The book followed a similar chronological structure as the previous books on urban planning history. The book covered the time period from Six Dynasties to the Republic China. Therefore, it was not a book that only focused on ancient Chinese planning theory or contemporary western planning theory, as
it tried to catch multiple transitional phases in the history of Nanjing. Since it focused on
the history of Nanjing only, it also gave more detailed information on this specific city
than the other books. Previous books talked about “Zhou Li” and “Guan Zi” generally
together, but this book divided these two ideas into two different approaches when dealing with city planning. The author pointed out that Beijing and Chang’an were the typical cities that were following the idea of “Zhou Li”, while Nanjing was the city that followed the idea of “Guan Zi”.41 Moreover, the author put Nanjing on a very special
and important spot, as it was the city where east met wets, north met south.42 Another important element of this book was that it gave recognition to the importance of the wars that had done destruction towards the city.43 In addition, this book did not purely provide
historic fact, but it gave analysis and critique thinking. For example, after the author
talked about the city plan proposed during the Public China period, he also gave his
judgment on the pros and cons about this plan. It is said that the plan tried to make the
city better by planning traffic system, upgrading the infrastructure, creating united
41 Zemin Su, Urban Planning History of Nanjing (Beijing: China Architecture and Building Press, 2008), 3. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. 26
Republic China style building, etc., but at the same time, it had disadvantages: the plan lacked a united standardization and it was not fully implemented as it encountered the war time; also it brought problems to the entire city form including cutting important historic sites into half, and it also increased the gap between the rich and poor.44 This critical analysis is also very important for the research and this book provided a potential possibility to look at the research question. Since many books about history usually wanted to keep an objective perspective, they tried to avoid individual comments while neglecting the point that a skeptical critic and active discussion were also a way to reach objective understanding.
3.2.2 Other Studies
Beyond the chronological history on Nanjing, the other books started to vary in focus and structure. Some books focus on only one dynasty. Like the book written by
Tinghai Wu, it tried to study the city plan of Jiankang during the Six Dynasty periods
(Jiankang is one of the old ancient names of Nanjing). Not only this book focused one dynasty, it also picked out a very special and interesting perspective. The author pretended himself as the urban planner in the ancient time, and thought about how he would decide the location of the city from that perspective.45 Also the author utilized a variety of resources including ancient drawings and texts, and came up with graphic
44 Zemin Su, Urban Planning History of Nanjing, 3. 45 Tinghai Wu, Planning and Drawing of Six Dynastie’s Jiankang (Beijing: Qinghua University Press, 2011), 13. 27
analysis based on them, which made the author’s points very clear and easy to get.46
Another books written by Fanren Meng focused on the three capitals during Ming
Dynasty. Three different cities had become capitals of Yuan Dynasty, and one of them was Nanjing. By studying and comparing these three capitals, the author created a more fixed context to explain the different options and developments the emperors and city planners had made or chosen during that dynasty.47 Based on this, the author seemed to
perceive the arrangement of cities as a decision making process which was fairly different
form the typical historians’ perspective. Also, this book gave a huge emphasis on the
palaces in the cities, which confirmed the fact that the ancient city planning was
centralized around palace.48 The book also mentioned the large population immigration
and emigration during the early Yuan period. 49 People usually thought the large
population fluctuation only occur in the modern time under a more globalized context,
and the ancient cities tend to have a fixed group of people. However, this information
proves that the population exchange has long occurred in the history and there is no city
that has stable and unchanged population.
Another interesting books produced by the Nanjing Management Office of Roads
talked about the ancient road history in Nanjing. This is very interesting as road was also
an important aspect during the development of a city. Not only the road could create inner
connection between different districts within the city, but also it creates traffic connection
46 Tinghai Wu, Planning and Drawing of Six Dynastie’s Jiankang, 23. 47 Fanren Meng, Ming Dynasty Capitals (Nanjing: Nanjing Press, 2013), 6. 48 Fanren Meng, 87. 49 Fanren Meng, 67. 28
among multiple cities and places. Because a city can not survive on its own, the connection and communication are also very important. The traffic is a part that was not fully covered in other books and this book made this up. Also the book tried to record the current location of ancient roads or landmarks.50 This information would be very helpful
in the later research for studying the historic revolution of the city.
The books on history of Nanjing does not limit to these four. There are some
other books but their focus and topics are even more random. The book Negotiating
urban space: Urbanization and Late Ming Nanjing written by Fei Si-yen is a book on the
study of urbanization that “explored how the expanding roles and functions of cities led
the idea of city to be reinvented, contested, and reconceived in the late Ming empire”.51
Similar with other books, the author beloved that history was an ongoing process and so did urban space.52 Based on this, the book considered the problem about how to put the
physical condition of a city into the context of economy, politics, and culture.
Besides, there are books that were not even considered as academic books, but
they included useful information for the research. One of such books included prose about different cities. One of the articles wrote about Nanjing, and through this article, people could get a glimpse on what the city looked like during 1970s.53
50 Nanjing Management Office of Roads, Nanjing Ancient Roads History (Nanjing: Jiangsu Science and Technology Press, 1989), 13. 51 Si-yen Fei, Negotiating urban space: Urbanization and Late Ming Nanjing (Cambridge: Harvard Press, 2009). 52 Ibid. 53 Zhen Yu, The Present and Past of Chinese Famous Cities (Hong Kong: Xinzhong Press, 1973), 126. 29
3.3 Beijing as a Comparing Example
Beijing is the capital of China, and it also serves as the capital during the Ming
and Qing dynasty. Therefore, it is the city that has obviously the most priority while
comes to the urban planning research and practice of preservation in planning field.
While this type of information is not fully available for Nanjing, the books about Beijing
would become very good reference resources.
3.3.1 Urban Planning History of Beijing
A book written by Yanan Wang focused on the city planning of Beijing between
the years 1900-1949. This typical time period was chosen because the author felt there
was ignorance in the modern time history among academic researches.54 Also she felt the
entire study of planning history lacked a clear system and more detailed research was
needed to strengthen the entire field.55 The author believed that the history was a
continuous process; therefore the chronological evidence was very important.56 As a
result, the book examined the political status change, the city districts status change, and
the process of opening up city space in a clear chronological order. These focus aspects
were narrowed down by the author to create a more detailed study. In order to study these
aspect, the author utilized a series of methodology including: historic geography method
to study the historical context of city development, using the urban planning method to
54 Yanan Wang, 1900-1949 Research on Urban Planning and Construction of Beijing (Nanjing: Southeast University Press, 2008), 23. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid. 30
study the urban planning taken place in Beijing and how the western theories had been
practice, and finally using comparables to fully demonstrate the issues.57 The resources
the author had pulled out were historical document, related profiles, related graphics,
historic photos, and scholars’ paper. The entire structure in the book was very clear and it
could be easily understood by readers. Therefore, the research resources and methodology the author had used could potentially be adopted for this thesis research.
Beside the book structure, the author also made several important points in her book.
First was the idea that the style and the features of a city were formed by its walls and
architecture.58 This was important as the author provided a reason for preservation as
they were part of the city form. Second point was the recognition of the dilemma between
city tradition and city modernization.59 The author even went beyond this point by stating that current urban planning should not follow the original ancient planning theories as they were of self-correcting mechanism to maintain cities in the ancient form
and would not truly solve the contemporary development conflicts.60 This point is quite
fresh, and it reminds people about the importance to truly face the problem between
modernizations and preservation under the Chinese context.
Another book by Jainfei Zhu that studied the imperial city of Beijing from
1420-1911 shared a similar research basis as the book addressed the need to consider
cities as critical problems and the study of them should neither bee too physical nor too
57 Yanan Wang, 1900-1949 Research on Urban Planning and Construction of Beijing, 23. 58 Yanan Wang, 28. 59 Yanan Wang, 213. 60 Yanan Wang, 201. 31
symbolic and spiritual.61 What differentiated this book with the previous one was that it
also gave a look at the religious structure of Beijing at that time. This is a point that worth
noticing as Nanjing is also used to be a religious city in the history.
3.3.2 Preservation Plan of Beijing
The only book that I have read relating to the conservation plan for the Beijing
city is the Conservation Plan produced by Beijing Municipal Planning Commission. The
entire book was divided into three parts: the preservation plan for Beijing as a historical
city, the preservation plan for the Forbidden City and the appendix including opinions
and comments from different experts.62 This plan should have been carefully approached,
based on Beijing’s status as one of the most important cities in China. Therefore, its
structure is very helpful to provide a glimpse at the preservation planning policy status in
contemporary China. Also, it seems that the plan tried to receive certain level of
international conversation and attention, as the book was written in both Chinese and
English. The plan provided a guideline for preservation: three levels and one priority.
Three levels were conservation of historic relics, conservation of the conservation
districts of historic sties, and conservation of historic city, and the one priority referred to
the old city.63 This structure would be helpful for future comparison with Nanjing city.
At the same time, this plan revealed some questions that need to be considered for the
61 Jianfei Zhu, Chinese Spatial Strategies: Imperial Beijing 1420-1911 (London: Routledge, 2004), 1. 62 Beijing Municipal Planning Commission, Conservation Plan for the Historic City of Beijing and Imperial City of Beijing (Beijing: China Architecture and Building Press, 2004), 4. 63 Beijing Municipal Planning Commission, 24. 32
thesis research. First is the plan lacked an explanation of historic development of Beijing.
If considering the plan as a product for policy making, it is understandable that the
historical revolution is not necessary. On the other hand, however, the importance of
preservation or the reason for preservation could not be interpreted by people if the
evolution of the city was not fully explained. Second was the missing part for negotiating
with modern development. The plan gave recognition of conflict between preservation of
Beijing as a historic city and the modern development.64 However, there was no solution
being provided to solve this conflict throughout the preservation plan. Also, the plan
mentioned that one of the major problems for the preservation of the old city in Beijing is the large density of population. Without facing the current need and necessity for modernization, the solution provided for simply moving people out of the old city sounded fairly unpractical.
3.4 City Memory
Since the research is targeting on the city fabric, both individual and collective
memory are examined. However, since memory is not a truly academic field but more
like a research subject, the books that talk about memory are even more random than the
previous topics.
The only book that is written around collective memory is Maurice Halbwachs’
64 Beijing Municipal Planning Commission, Conservation Plan for the Historic City of Beijing and Imperial City of Beijing, 185. 33
book The Collective Memory, and it is one of the original sources that mentioned the
concept of collective memory. The entire book consisted four parts, which are individual
memory and collective memory, historical memory and collective memory, time and the
collective memory, space and the collective memory. 65 This book is more like a
philosophical and psychological book that worked around the idea of collective memory.
Arguments from different perspectives were well-composed, and among them there was
also discussion about how urban changes would affect people’s habits.66 The space was
further divided into legal space, economic space and religion space by the author. All this
information set a foundation to examine the collective memory of Nanjing. However, one
of the problems of this book is that it was published in 1980s and this book does not
specifically relate memory with either preservation or urban planning.
There are books focusing on personal expressions. For example, the book Looking
for Prominent Historic Cities by Peng Li introduced a series of cities throughout the
world that were historic to the author. Even though the books included encyclopedic
information and facts, but the descriptions were obviously very personal as the first
person narrator was kept using through out the text. Another book, Today and Past of
Chinese Famous Cities by Yu Zhen, was completely written in the form of travel journal.
These texts may not be able to be used as argument evidences, but they provide glimpse about how people capture the memory of a city. In both texts, the authors described
65 Maurice Halbwach, The Collective Memory (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1980), 134. 66 Ibid. 34
Nanjing as a city with deep cultural roots even though Yu Zhen mentioned large area of
industrial districts were set up in Nanjing in 1970.67
Another type of book is focusing on the memory of certain historic events, and
the Nanking 1937: Memory and Healing edited bay Feifei Li, Robert Sabella and David
Liu is one of the examples. The entire book was a collection of different authors’ articles,
and they all had more or less relation with the Nanjing Massacre that has taken place in
1937. This book is valuable on several aspects. First it is a book on the dark history,
which is a topic that is seldom touched. Second, instead of discussing the memory that
was memorized, the book also talked about how erasure of certain memory could help to
heal the scars.68 This reverse way of thinking is unique and is worth adopting in order to
create a bidirectional discussion.
3.5 Historic Preservation and Urban Planning
The relationship between historic preservation and urban planning is also been examined by different scholars. Urban Planning and Historic Preservation written by Li
Qirong is one of the books that directly connect the idea of historic preservation and urban planning. The book follows a logical order from the city origin to legal system about preservation.69 Also it talks about different forms of planning related preservation
approach like heritage protection, historic district protection and historic city protection
67 Yu Zhen, The Present and Past of Chinese Famous Cities, 133. 68 Feifei Li, Robert Sabella and David Liu (eds.), Nanking 1937: Memory and Healing Nanking (New York: An East Gate Book, 2002), 75. 69 Qirong Li, Urban Planning and Historic Preservation (Nanjing: Southeast University Press, 2003), 1. 35
and old city rehabilitation protection.70 The book did not directly address the question
how to relate historic preservation and urban planning on table, but the author has already
consider the preservation approach on the urban form a planning practice. This book is
heavily policy driven which is more close to the urban planning theory. Some other
resources, instead of focusing on the idea of connecting two fields, are more concern
about the feasibility of preservation planning. For example, Historic Preservation: an
Introduction to Its History, Principles, and Practice written by Norman Tyler is a book
introducing historic preservation, but it also include an individual chapter talking about
preservation planning. Another book that works entirely around the idea of preservation
planning is Harold Kalman’s Heritage Planning, but it further expands on the advocacy
or policy and connects them with value-based preservation system.71
In addition, Zhang Song’s An Introduction to Integrated Conservation: A Way For the Protection of Culture Heritage and Historic Environment is book that is organized with historic cit protection and it is focused on the context of China. Zhang believes that the basic preservation goal is not anti-aging related, but is to sharply examined the power of changing and point out the potential change direction in the future.72 Further more, it
is said that preservation should be trying to stabilize the life and social structure of a place, and preventing the over-speed changing of a society.73 And this book is also policy
70 Qirong Li, Urban Planning and Historic Preservation, 93. 71 Harold Kalman, Heritage Planning: Principles and Process, 207. 72 Zhang Song, An Introduction to Integrated Conservation: A Way For the Protection of Culture Heritage and Historic Environment, 3. 73 Zhang Song, 15. 36
related as it also looks into the preservation regulation in other countries including
European countries, United States and Japan.
Other resources are not necessary scholars’ research but the existing ICOMOS
charters and UNESCO recommendations, and they all help to interpret the international
take on the idea of integration of planning and preservation. First is the Athens Charter as
it is the first international conservation charter. This charter is composed due to the
anti-conservation development trend at the time, and it recognizes that urban planning
should reflect on the four functions of the city: dwelling, work, recreation, and
transportation.74 Also it claims that “ the planning program must be based on rigorous
analytical studies carried out by specialists…must foresee its stages of development in
time and space…must coordinate the natural resources of the site, its topographic
advantages, its economic assets, its social needs and its spiritual aspirations.”75 Second is
the Venice Charter and it is more specifically address and define the idea of historic sites,
preservation and conservation.76 However, since this charter is built upon the Athens
Charter, urban planning is not mentioned. Burra Charter, on the other hand, provides a
clearer response to the role planning plays in historic preservation by claiming the idea of
cultural –significance.77 Besides ICOMOS charters, the UNESCO also provides a series
74 Getty Conservation Institute, “Charters of Athens (1933),” Web. 1 May 2015. http://www.getty.edu/conservation/publications_resources/research_resources/charters/charter04.html. 75 Ibid. 76 Harold Kalman, Heritage Planning: Principles and Process, 133. 77 Australia ICOMOS, “Burra Charter,” Web. 1 May 2015. http://australia.icomos.org/wp-content/uploads/BURRA_CHARTER.pdf. 37
of recommendation to the governments, which touches upon the content of preserving
heritage through policies and planning.78
3.6 Summary of Literature Review
Overall, by looking through all these books and articles, it kind of proves the
previous assumption that there is a lack of focus or less attention on how to connect the
idea of urban planning with historic preservation. Even though Beijing has produced its
conservation plan, it tends to work as an independent document and shows no attention to
respond to the other city plans. Also there is a lack of transition in the city planning history. It is very common to see that the study of history on urban planning or certain cities focus on one specific period of time, and talks about either ancient Chinese city planning or contemporary Chinese city planning. This is partially due to the less
frequency for updating the related published document, as the entire China has just
started its contemporary urban planning practices and everything is still under the process
of testing, but still there is a less study during this transitional point of planning theory,
especially from Qing to modern China. Moreover, even multiple books revealed authors’
concern on the dilemma between historic preservation and modernization, no solid
solution has been suggested to solve this dilemma, which shows a white space in the
study of either Chinese urban planning or historic preservation. In addition, since many
78 Harold Kalman, Heritage Planning: Principles and Process, 147. 38
people define urban planning as a creative process, most of the books talk more about
what have been created throughout the history, but less attention is paid on what have been destructed. Only one book directly talked about the wars in history which reveals another less studied area on melancholic history. Moreover, even in the cases where connection of planning and conservation is talked about, the discussion tends to be more
general by focusing on a national or global scale.
39
Chapter 4: Historical Development of Nanjing as a City
4.1 Ancient Chinese City Development
Three are various theories about how ancient Chinese cities were planned and
developed. Also it may reveal different paths by looking at different year ranges. Even
though this thesis is looking into local identity which emphasizes more on uniqueness of
places, it should not be ignored that there was a shared general pattern for city
development in the past.79 This pattern may not be very clear if put into a global scale, as
it is rather more discussable under the context of country of China.
During the different periods the definitions and the forms of a city are different.
Before the formal formation of the city, the rudiment of a city can be called as a
settlement, which refers to areas that contains grouped built structures. This kind of
history of building activities in China can be dated to about seven thousands years ago.80
Based on the research of these historical cities or settlements, scholars find out that they more ore less share a similar form, which indicates that there must be a systematical principles or strategies to plan these cities.81 However, there is not a lot of written text
that is passed down through thousands years’ history of China. The reason for this
situation may vary. It may because the written text and regulations are destroyed in the
events like warfare. Also, unlike other cultures that always use more preservable
79 Jianjun Huang, Research on China Ancient Capitals Selection and Local Planning Layout Thinking, 6. 80 Xinian Fu, Research on Ancient Chinese Cities Planning, Architecture Group Layout and Design Strategies (Beijing: China Architectural Industry Press, 2001), 1. 81 Xinian Fu, 4. 40
materials like stones and ceramics to record, a large proportion of Chinese text is
recorded on more organic material like bamboo and paper. Therefore, the more dated
record may have decayed and been lost. Besides, it is also because the way to inherit
specialized strategy is very unique in Chinese culture, as learning is not through reading a
manual but through hand-on teaching.82 As a result, to study the history of ancient city
development is challenged by limited amount of texts and many studies are based on
archeological analysis.
Among the text that is preserved, the earliest record of city planning related information is found in the “Book of Diverse Crafts” (考工记) that is produced during the Spring & Autumn periods. The text gives out detailed description of what a city should look like. For example, it says that the city should be planned in a grid system and
the palace should in the center. Also it says that the ancestor temple should be placed on
the left side of the palace and the worshiping shrine should be placed on the right, while
on the back there should be a market. However, when comparing this description of cities
with the excavated archeological sites, scholars found out that not all of the historic cities
strictly follow this set of disciplines. Therefore, it is assumed that the description is more
of an idealized city, and the practical construction should also consider limitation caused
by natural environment.83 Despite the exceptions, this description about cities explains
that why different ancient Chinese cities share a similar form and structure. Moreover,
82 Xinian Fu, Research on Ancient Chinese Cities Planning, Architecture Group Layout and Design Strategies, 4. 83 Xinian Fu, 1. 41
this idealized clear hierarchy of placement of each functional area is a philosophy that is carried throughout the history. Another important text “Book of Rites: Book of Music”
(礼记 乐记) also proves this type of idea. Though “Book of Rites: Book of Music” is not a book talking about city planning, it explains that order/sequence and harmony with nature is the absolutely law of ruling and living, otherwise the society will fall into chaos.
Also as mentioned in the context, actually none of the cities in China (either the existing ones or the ones found out on archeological sites) have ever completely fall into the idealized model of Chinese city. Of course the boundaries of natural environment are part of the reason, as Chinese traditional philosophy forbids going against nature.
Furthermore, the imperial palace is usually considered as a perfect example of perfectly planned place, but some scholars also find out that it is actually not. Also referring to the cities in the “boundaries” of China is sometimes misleading, as China covers a huge piece of land and different cultures have continuously appeared on this land. At the same time places that share a similar culture like Korea and Japan are excluded in this discussion. The argument depicted in this way is because Nanjing always belongs to the mainstream culture of China and does not fall into the misleading gene, but the historical and administrative misfits should still keep in mind. These two earliest documents about creating cities are agreeable by scholars as they are fixed, but from then on there is no nailed down idea about ancient Chinese planning theories. Different scholars would come up with different theories based on various resources, and the theories have to be kept
42
testing on different archeological sites.
Some scholars believe that the beginning of “city” should be dated back to
prehistoric periods. The earliest rudiment of city in China discovered during this period is
about five thousand to six thousand years ago. During that time, one of the Neolithic
Civilizations named Yangshao Culture is considered as a maturely developed civilization
and its settlements tend to locate in the lower stream of the Yellow River. Two of the
Yangshao archeological sites excavated have discovered relative intact trace of built
structures. They both shared a similar form: near water resource, has a ditch-like security
installation, smaller built structures surround an open space in the center, a larger built
structure in the center which is probably a ritual structure, and cemetery outside the
ditch.84 It is clear that people at that time have certain consideration of the arrangement of structure, but they are still more randomly located. Another better archeological site example is founded in Henan Province named Xishan Chengzhi (西山城址), as trace of
city wall and moat are excavated on it. Not only this site has city walls, but based on the
excavated housing foundation, the arrangement of the built structure seems to follow a
clear way of layout. Dated back to six thousands years ago, this is probably the earliest
predecessor that is closest to the form of a city that has discovered in China.85 But this discussion based on prehistoric sties is arguable at the same time. First it is valuable as the history of many cities, including Nanjing has prehistoric activities taken place. And
84 Jianjun Huang, Research on China Ancient Capitals Selection and Local Planning Layout Thinking, 13. 85 Xinian Fu, Research on Ancient Chinese Cities Planning, Architecture Group Layout and Design Strategies, 4. 43
the classical idea that “sky is round and earth is square” (天圆地方) which strongly affect
the later on planning philosophies initiates at this point.86 On the other hand, however,
prehistoric settlements expose many challenges for people at that time to conquer and the
predominant one is how to survive. Therefore, prehistoric people may choose to settle
down near water resources based on a natural instinct, but not a systematic planning
process. Also even though evidences show there may be ritual activities during this
period and the existence of physical city wall may indicate a certain level of warfare, the
society is still considered as lacking societal activities.87 And for many other scholars, they believe the history of city planning began in the Xia dynasty as it is the first feudal hereditary dynasty. With the rising awareness of social hierarchy, emperors would have clearer intent of using city space to create centralized authority in order to better rule people and this is also the place where geomancy starts to play significant roles in planning process. Moreover, it also accompanying with the increasing number and expansion of settlements, which is a result societal progress, technological development and increasing population.88
4.2 Imperial City Planning
The planning and construction of ancient imperial cities do not differ a lot from
ordinary cities. Actually since a capital would usually get more financial funding, the
86 Jianjun Huang, Research on China Ancient Capitals Selection and Local Planning Layout Thinking, 16. 87 Jianjun Huang, 24. 88 Linde Zhuang, and Jingxiang Zhang, Development and Construction History of Chinese Cities, 19. 44
construction of imperial city should be closer to the idealized city model. Also because there is a clear hierarchy on the ranking of different cities, an imperial city sits on top of the hierarchical pyramid and the rulers would be more cautious while picking the site location and planning out the city grid. In addition, the Chi (气) of a place, according to
the geomancy principles, is very crucial in the ancient times, as it is believed that the Qi
of a place can greatly affect one’s fate. Chi does not have a fixed form and it usually be
described as sort of atmosphere. If an emperor wants the dynasty to last forever, then the
imperial city should have the Chi of a dragon (Chinese dragon is a mysterious auspicious
animal which usually used as the symbol of emperor). Of course the site selection is not
completely based on mysterious theories, and the traffic convenience and military
advantages would also take in to consideration. Thus, cities that would bring multiple
benefits especially political and military ones would have a larger chance to be picked by
the emperor. Besides, what makes an imperial city stands out from the other regular cities
is the existence of imperial palace. In many cases, due to the topography of land, it is not
practical to create the entire city based on the ideal form and this is why it is almost
impossible to find a city that is a perfect rectangle. However, the imperial palace is
covered a smaller piece of land and have a larger chance to be built into perfect rectangle.
This rectangle usually sits in the most auspicious location within the city, and is
representation of absolute power of the ruler. Also what accompanying with the imperial city at the same time is usually a group of high-standard mausoleums constructed at the
45
peripheral of the city.
4.3. The Historic City Fabric Development of Nanjing
The human activities in the location of Nanjing can be dated back to prehistoric periods, but the history of datable city in the region of current Nanjing is about 2480 years long.89 The reason to use “city in the region of Nanjing” to describe is because the
development and transformation of built fabric in this area is a complicated narrative.
Though now these transformations are all considered as the history of Nanjing, many
“cities” that has been built in this area throughout the two thousands years’ history are not
under the name of Nanjing.
During the Spring & Autumn Periods, there are two cities that were built in the
region of today’s Nanjing. One of them sits at the northern side of Yangtze River named
Tang Yi (棠邑). The other one sits at the southern shore of Yangtze River named Gu
Cheng (固城). Comparing to the current Nanjing form, neither of these two cities
location are in the center of Nanjing, as one of them is in Liu He (六和) and one is in Gao
Chun (高淳). Also their sizes are extremely small comparing to the scale of today’s
Nanjing. In 472 BCE, the Yue State constructed a Tu City named Yu which is used as
billet for soldiers. Then in 333 BCE, the Chu State defeated the Yue State, and
constructed a new city name Jinling Yi (金陵邑) on the top of Qingliang Mountain (清凉
89 Zemin Su, Urban Planning History of Nanjing, 1. 46
山). This is the first time that the city erected in this region becomes an official political
administrative district. At the end of East Han Dynasty, leader Sun Quan (孙权)
constructed a new city on the site of the original Jinling Yi and renamed the city into
Shitou Cheng (石头城). In 229, Sun Quan relocated the capital from Wuchang to Jianye
(建邺). Jianye was one of the historic names of Nanjing. As capitals usually received
more attention than other cities, the development of Nanjing as a city has accelerated
since then, and Six Dynasties becomes Nanjing’s first flourishing period.90 Then comes to the East Jin Dynasty, the name of Jianye has changed to Jiankang (建康), and the city is continuously served as a capital until the end of Southern Dynasty. The entire history of Nanjing as imperial city lasted for about 360 years. Through this period as a capital,
Jiankang which is now Nanjing has developed into a metropolis that resides about 1.4 million people. In 589, the Sui Dynasty has defeated the last king of Six Dynasties. And in order to prevent people taking over this area and claim to be emperor again, the emperor of Sui commanded to turn this three hundreds year’s old capital into farmlands.
It is not until the time of Five Dynasties, a new city called Jiangnig Fucheng (江宁府城) was founded in today’s Nanjing as the capital of the Southern Tang (one of the Five
Dynasties) and the scale of the city was constructed bigger than the previous Jiankang.
Then the time came to the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the emperor Zhu Yuanzhang
(朱元璋) started to construct Nanjing City again as a capital based on the existing form
90 Zemin Su, Urban Planning History of Nanjing, 10. 47
of Jiangning Fucheng. The construction took place between the year 1366 and 1393,
which cost twenty-eight years to fully build.91
The changing of names of Nanjing reveals the ups and downs of Nanjing as a city, and this is also reflected in the city form. Throughout the history before Republic China,
Nanjing has experience four flourishing periods. First one is during the Six Dynasties under the Name of Jiangye, the second one is during Southern Tang under the name
Jingling, the third one is at the beginning of Ming Dynasty, and the last one is the
Jiangning Fucheng during late Qing.92 Today, even Nanjing becomes the official name of the city, but the name of Jinling or Jiankang still remembered constantly using by local people. Besides, road planning system also contributes the remembrance of past history.
During the Republic China period, the city constructed several roads to accommodate the increasing need of automobile transportation. And some of the roads are named by the past names of Nanjing like Baixia Road and Jianye Road.
The following map Figure 4-1 marks the location of each “imperial city” during times. The past non-imperial cities are not recorded in this map. First is that they do not necessary help to form today’s fabric of Nanjing. Second, they are very small comparing to the size of city at the imperial state and most of them are located along the river, serving as military structure. Comparing these imperial cities, it is not difficult to find out they are all north-south oriented, and they are all rectangular, which are both evidences of
91 Nanjing Ming City Wall Museum, Vicissitudes of City Walls, 2. 92 Nanjing Local Chronicles Compilation Committee. Nanjing local Chronicles, Web. 1 May 2015. http://221.226.86.187:8080/webpic/njdfz/UpLoadFile/html/sz1_4/sec.html. 48
ancient urban planning practices. Nowadays, all the palaces that once erected on this land are gone, leaving only the ruins of Ming Palace. The only relatively intact city walls are
the Ming city wall. This phenomenon is also reflected in local people’s memory. Unlike
the constant preservation of city name, most people only know the existence of Ming
Palace, and the location of other places has already covered with later on constructions.
The imperial history of Nanjing before Ming has deeply covered underneath the surface of Nanjing, both physically or mentally.
49
Figure 4-1: Imperial Cities of different periods in Nanjing93
93 Zemin Su, Urban Planning History of Nanjing, 8. 50
Chapter 5: Modern Urban Planning of Nanjing
5.1 Contemporary City Planning History
The cities during the Qing dynasty of China were developed under the
semi-colonial and semi-feudal context, as the western imperialism started to invade
China.94 The invasion of western countries accelerated the commercial activities and some intellectuals in China started to adopt western theories and technologies. Starting around 1860s, China slowly began to develop industries and around 1910s the highway and railroads were slowly constructed. All of this has brought direct impact on the cities’ fabric. On the urban planning process, Chinese cities started to mimic the planning method of western countries, and the traditional way of planning was gradually abandoned. In 1949 the People’s Republic of China was founded. Between the year 1949 to 1960, China kept a close relationship with Soviet Union and the planning at that time
was heavily impacted by Soviet Union’s cities. Then between the year 1965 to 1977,
China underwent the Culture Revolution and the development of cities were suspended.
Came to 1978, China began to reform and open up, and the development and urban
planning process were slowly resumed. Especially around 1980s, many cities have come
up their own master plan in order to further guide the development of the city to
accommodate the need for modernization.
94 Zhang and Zhuang, Development and Construction History of Chinese Cities, 159. 51
5.2 Urban Planning History of Nanjing
A little different from the general pattern of city planning in China, the
contemporary urban planning process in Nanjing began at the Republic China period, after Beijing has temporarily stopped serving as the capital of China. The Ming city wall is the only intact heritage preserved and it is a symbol of security and boundary for a long time. However, through the development of technology, the city wall can no longer satisfy the defense needs of a city, especially after more powerful weapons were brought from western countries. City wall, as a starting point, raises conflicts between the city
developments. In 1927 after the Republic Chinas has officially settled its capital in
Nanjing, the government once ordered to demolish the city wall between the Shence Gate
(神策门) and Taiping Gate (太平门). Under the advocacy of some scholars including Xu
Beihong (徐悲鸿), this plan was not put into force at last. However, the contradiction
between the old cities and a modernized city has become more and more fierce. During
the 1950, about one third of the Ming City Wall was at last still destructed and most of
the city gates were also removed.95 Figure 5-1 and Figure 5-2 shows the dramatic changes on the city wall during the modern period. The orange color marks out the city wall; the red dots represent the original city gates that have existed during Ming
Dynasties; the pink dots indicate the gates that were added for the convenience of traffic or city expansion.
95 Nanjing Ming City Wall Museum, Vicissitudes of City Walls, 4. 52
Figure 5-1: Diagram of original City Wall96
96 Zheng Dong, Hand-Painted Nanjing (Beijing: Sin Maps, 2010). 53
Figure 5-2: Diagram of Today’s City Wall97
Not only certain historic features are demolished, the urban planning of Nanjing has switched to a different path. During the Republic China period, the government has undergone seven times of general city planning on different scale.98 And in 1929, the government officially announced a master city plan to change Nanjing into a political center. The master plan was named the Capital Plan (首度计划), and it is specifically
97 Zheng Dong, Hand-Painted Nanjing (Beijing: Sin Maps, 2010). 98 Nanjing Local Chronicles Compilation Committee. “Nanjing local Chronicles”. 54
looking into Washington D.C. in America as a prototype. Moreover, American planners
Henry Kikkam Murphy, Ernest P．Goodrich and Ruud Gullit were hired to produce this
city planning document. Therefore, the adoption of western planning theories became an
unavoidable approach in Nanjing, and the entire plan was actually completely jumped out
of the traditional Chinese city planning principles. Because of the war, this master plan
was not finished and was not fully interpreted. However, the urban fabric of Nanjing still
changed under its influences. Figure 5-3 shows the map of 1910 Nanjing, and it should be
an fairly accurate documentation of urban fabric of Nanjing during Qing dynasty as the
Republic China has not started the urban transformation at the time. Figure 5-4 is a
diagram of traffic system planned by the Republic China government, and the reference
to a westernized gridded traffic system with boulevards and central circular plaza are very clear. Figure 5-5 is a 1936 Nanjing map. As it shows in red lines, only the major north-south, east-west boulevards are fully constructed. Even though these boulevards
caused the transformation of streetscape in Nanjing, they now become important traffic
axis that cut through the city and take over large amount of transportation. Furthermore,
along theses boulevards, people visitors can easily encounter historic sites from Republic
China period as most of the political structures are constructed along this traffic grid at
that time.
55
Figure 5-3: 1910 Nanjing Map99
99 Shanhua Jiang (Eds.), 1910 Nanjing Historic Map (Nanjing: Nanjing Press, 2012). 56
Figure 5-4: Diagram of planned Nanjing road system100
100 Wenxiong Hong and Zhanwei Pan, 1936 Nanjing Historic Map (Beijing: Xueyuan Press, 2005). 57
Figure 5-5: Diagram of constructed boulevards on 1946 Nanjing map101
101 Shanhua Jiang (Eds.), 1946 Nanjing Historic Map (Nanjing: Nanjing Press, 2012). 58
Later after the communist party has won the civil war, the forces of Republic
China has moved out from mainland China to Taiwan and the communist party founded
the People’s Republic China in 1949 with its capital relocated back to Beijing. Between
the year 1950 and 1995, Nanjing has also underwent six times of general urban planning,
but not all of them have been approved by the State Council and the city never really interpreted them. Beginning in 1978, with the end of cultural revolution and
China-open-up policy, Nanjing started to compose a new master plan document “Nanjing
Master Urban Plan 1981-2000” (南京市总体规划 1981-2000). This plan was approved
by the State Council in 1983 and it was the first official planning document that has been
produced for Nanjing after the new China has been founded.102 Then six years later in
1989, the planning department started to prepare for the adjustment of the original
1981-2000 mater plan document. The modification was completed in 1992 and the
document was renamed into “Nanjing Master Urban Plan 1991-2010”.103 This new
document was officially approved in 1995. In this document, the plan first raised out the
concept about separating the city into three parts as demonstrated in the Figure 5-6: from
center to the margin are major city, metropolis and administrative region.104 This idea is
carried out in the following document. After that in 2001 this master plan was adjusted
again. Ten years later, the planning department produced a new master plan “Nanjing
Master Urban Plan 2011-2020” to replace the old one. This plan was later adjusted in
102 Nanjing Local Chronicles Compilation Committee. “Nanjing local Chronicles”. 103 Idib. 104 Idib. 59
2007 and was renamed “Nanjing Master Urban Plan 2007-2030”.105 This 2007-2030 is
the version of master plan that is implemented by Nanjing currently.
105 House 365. “Looking into the Nanjing 2030,” Web. 1 May 2015. http://www.house365.com/html_zhuanti/zhuanti/20090705/1246789718.html. 60
Figure 5-6: Diagram of spatial division of major city (red), metropolis (orange) and administrative region (green)106
106 House 365, “Looking into the Nanjing 2030”. 61
All of this is the city planning history on the level of a city, and there are also
many separate documents called specialized plan that is targeting on protection of
cultural and historical city, traffic, green space, city infrastructure, etc. The realization of
Nanjing as an important historic city has started long time ago. On February 18th 1982, the State Council first announced a list of Famous Historic and Cultural City (历史文化
名城). Among the 24 cities that have been listed, Nanjing is one of them. In the comment given back by State Council after the approval Nanjing master plan in 1983, it also clearly indicated that Nanjing is an important historic city and its cultural relics must be protected and the style of architecture around them should match with them.107 Soon after that in 1984, a new document named “Preservation Plan of Nanjing as a historic and cultural city” (南京历史文化名城保护规划方案). In this plan, five districts, which are the Zhongshan Scenic Area, Stone City scenic area, Dajiang Scenic Area, Yuhuatai
Historic and Scenic District and Qinhuai Scenic District (钟山风景区、石城风景区、大
江风貌区、雨花台风景名胜区，秦淮风光带) were entitled as the focus or preservation.108 Besides, the historic city walls, ditches, and green boulevards and green
spaces are also considered as protection subjects in this document. In 1992, a new
“Preservation Plan of Nanjing as a historic and cultural city (南京历史名城保护规划)”
was announced and a sixth Scenic Districts, the Ming City Wall Preservation Zone (明城
垣保护带) was added as the sixth preservation district. All of this is the preservation
107 Nanjing Local Chronicles Compilation Committee. “Nanjing local Chronicles”. 108 Idib. 62
regulation announced by the city. Each scenic area or important historic site would further have their own rules or regulation regarding to the protection of cultural relics.109
Above all is the general planning district of Nanjing. Under the contemporary context, Nanjing has updated its planning policies quite frequently, reflecting both of the fast pace of development and efficient work done by the policy planning agencies.
However, if examined more closely, the planning process has clear gap between the management systems. On the highest level, the national government and the state council have the prominent voice and absolute power. All the plans that are produced on the city level have to be approved by the sate first. Also, the listing of “prominent historic and cultural cities” is a protection mechanism announced under the national government. The similar idea is the listing of “national historic heritage protection”, and the sites are included needs national approval before any modification or destruction could take place.
However, overall the more physical implementation is still taken on at the level of city government and private sectors. Being listed as a historic site cannot completely prevent the site from damage. In fact, many historic sites have been demolished without approval by government. This is partly due to the chaos in the management system. Even the related regulations are issued, but most of the neighborhoods are not monitoring by any city agencies. The relative important landmarks or sites would have individual management offices. However, on one hand these offices do not correspond with each
109 Nanjing People's Political Consultative Conference, “Condition and Suggestion on Nanjing Historic and Cultural Heritage Protection,“ Web. 1 May 2015. http://www.chinadmd.com/file/o6uc6x63ezztv6tvvw6ceiuu_1.html. 63
other, and on the other hand some historic sites like Ming city wall would have too many
monitoring agencies that have overlapping duties.110 In addition, since the city’s current
priority is economic development, the developers have the largest voice in the developing
processes and they would easily sacrifice the historic values in exchange for the
economic benefits. Therefore, the grassroots people become the disadvantage people
during the entire process of urban revitalization. 111 When the developers get the
permission to demolish a residential neighborhood, most of the grassroots residents can
hardly find any alternative ways except accepting the money and moving out of the
district.112
110 Lei Wang, “Dilemma and Win-win Situation of Nanjing urban construction andCultural Heritage Protection“, China Academy Journal (2007): 61. 111 Zhang Zhao, “The Study of Grassroots Resistance during the City Regeneration Process,“ Nanjing: Nanjing University of Science and Technology (Master Thesis), 2012, 2. 112 Zhan Zhao, 13. 64
Chapter 6: Comparables
6.1 Beijing
Beijing is the capital of China. It is not only the political center, but also one of
the most important economic and cultural hub of China. The reason that Beijing was
chosen as one the comparables is that the current form of old city district is more or less
using Nanjing as a prototype. Nanjing is known as the first capital in Ming Dynasty.
Later when the emperor of Ming relocated the capital to Beijing, the layout of the city, especially the imperial palace, were using the Nanjing and Yuan Dadu (元大都), the second capital of Ming as precedences. Therefore, the planning theories of Beijing and
Nanjing share certain level of similarities. Also, being a capital and an important cultural
center, Beijing obviously has the most priority towards the planning and preservation
research. Therefore its regulation and preservation practices are more advanced than the
ones of Nanjing.
Beijing has a long urban planning history which creates rich cultural resources.
The master plan of Beijing shows fully aware of this point. In the 20002-2020 Master
Plan of Beijing, it clearly indicates that the old city district of Beijing should be protected as a whole (Figure 6-1), especially the central axis, city walls, imperial palace, river system, road system, traditional housing, landscape and streetscape, architecture color and style, important trees. 113 Also the plan emphasizes the coordination between
113 Su Xiangdong, “Beijing Master Plan 2004-2020“. 65
functionality and historic scene. In 2014, the government further modified the master
plan. The modification especially targets on the over consumption of Beijing’s resources
and duplicate of its functions. Therefore, the plan suggests loosening the population in
the center city and locating some possible city sectors to the outer regions.114 Besides the
general master plan, the Beijing Municipal Planning Commission also produced a
preservation plan for Beijing. This plan includes three parts: the preservation of Beijing
as a historical city, the preservation of the Forbidden City and conclusive opinions and comments from different experts.115 Following the policy stated in the master, the
preservation plan is also focusing on preserving Beijing as a whole, and the old city is
given particular priority.116 The plan specifically talks about the threats the old city is
challenged by modern development, and a regulation of structure heights is advocated in
the plan.117 Moreover, the plan summarizes one of the major problems of old city has is
the over crowded people and a successful preservation should result in reducing
population in old city.118 Both these two plans give recognition of the need to preserve
the historical section of the city. The old city center, which is consistently advocated to preserve, is carefully cut out from the rest part of the city by using green spaces or water systems. Therefore there is a clear vision of dividing ancient city planning from contemporary city planning, as it is believed that the mechanisms of ancient Chinese
114 Li Ma, “Beijing Planning Modifications Will Highlight the ‘Lean’,“ Web. 1 May 2015. http://www.bjnews.com.cn/news/2014/08/05/328433.html. 115 Beijing Municipal Planning Commission, Conservation Plan for the Historic City of Beijing and Imperial City of Beijing, 20. 116 Ibid. 117 Ibid 118 Ibid 66
theories would not solve the contemporary needs, especially after 2001 when Beijing win the bid for Olympics Games.
Figure 6-1: The 2004-2020 Master Plan Diagram of Center City functionality119
119 Su Xiangdong, “Beijing Master Plan 2004-2020“. 67
These two plans still expose query towards the preservation of local identity. First
is that the plans do not really provide any solutions to solve the threats brought by modernization. And it is hart to predict if the old city would be able to avoid the impact
of globalization by being excluded from new construction. While the old city is preserved
in an ancient style, it also transfers into a popular tourism destiny and accommodated
dining or shopping options can hardly avoid the intervention of global brand. Second
problem is the ignorance of tradition streets Hutong (胡同) and housing Siheyuan (四合
院) in Beijing. Even the needs of preservation are addressed in the text of master
planning documents, but the protection of these two features is not included in the
preservation plan. The preservation of Hutong and Siheyuan are even more difficult than
the preservation of imperial palace. First they are vernacular features, and the less proper
management easily results in deterioration and damage. Also since new development projects or rehabilitation projects are came in, many of the Hutong and Siheyuan are demolished. It is said that about forty percent of the Hutong in Beijing has already disappeared through time.120 This series of concern are also addressed by artist like Wu
Hung, as he states in his book: By the 1990s, this city had been thoroughly destroyed…a tiny portion of old Beijing being protected as a prized collection of architectural fragments, mainly famous gardens, temples, theatres and especially, the isolated rectangle of the Forbidden City. These fragments are praised alarmingly with the brutality that has been imposed on other traditional structures of the vernacular kind. 121
120 Shousheng Zhang, “Forty Percent of Beijing Hutong Has Disapperaedm,” Web. 1 May 2015. http://news.xinhuanet.com/newscenter/2005-04/22/content_2865557.htm. 121 Hung Wu, A Story of Ruins: Presence and Absence in Chinese Art and Visual Culture (London: Reaktion Books, 2012), 230. 68
All of these are common problems that would be better to further address in the
urban planning process. In addition, it is important to keep in mind that the development
of Beijing is still quite different from the one of Nanjing. Beijing has continuously been
the capital for around 1000 years.122 Therefore, the destructions process of Beijing on a
city scale is less winding if comparing to Nanjing.
6.2 Seoul, South Korea
Seoul is the capital of the South Korea and its alias “the miracle of the Han River”
shows its important status and the dramatic changes it has experienced. It used to serve as
the capital of ancient Korea for five hundred years. And after the economic boom in 20th century, it grows into the largest metropolis in Korea with a population of 10 million.
While being the political, economic, technical and cultural center of contemporary South
Korea, the industrialization and modernization process did not turn Seoul completely into a modern city, as people usually describe Seoul as a city of contrast: modern versus tradition.
Even though it is not a city in China, but as mentioned before, the East Asia lands generally share a similar culture origin as the inter-cultural communication is very active during certain periods of time in history. When considering comparable it is better to also include a well-developed city under the contemporary context. Of course, there are many
122 Chi Chu, Nanking Album, i. 69
other cities in other countries, but Seoul is certainly shares a larger degree of similarity
with Nanjing which would make the comparable more interpretable. First is that the planning and developing of Seoul shares a similarity pattern. While planning for the city, the idea of geomancy was also adopted in Seoul. As a city sitting beside a river and its palace in the most auspicious location, the layout and the form of Seoul and Nanjing are similar. Moreover, just like Nanjing, Seoul is also a city planned while also perfectly accommodating the natural environment. Instead of constructing a city out of the ideal rectangle model, the city walled built around Seoul is following the natural topographic and is an irregular shape (Figure 6-2). Also the 10 mile fortress wall constructed all the way around the city was preserved in a relatively intact form and was nominated to the
UNESCO world heritage list in 2002. In all, the management and preservation of Seoul as an ancient imperial city is quite successful and the strategies it adopts could be used as references. Second similarity is the conflict between globalization and tradition. Seoul also has developed to its current scale in a very short amount of time, and the city is still expanding. As a result, the local identity of Seoul is also facing server threat and on-going destruction of its six hundred years history.123 Third, Seoul is also a city that is
dealing with dark history. Though may not be considered as a catastrophe, but the entire
Korea was controlled under the Japanese government starting in 1910, as Japan colonized
and used it as a backup site for the Russo-Japanese War. Japanese government has done
123 Nihal Perera, and Wing-Shing Tang, Transforming Asian Cities: Intellectual Impasse, Asianizing Space, and Emerging Translocalities (New York: Routledge, 2013), 20. 70
lot of damages to the ancient urban fabric including city gates and places, and is also built many new structures at the same time. Then after the Korean government took the sovereignty of the country back, the city is undergoing a series of reparation and restoration. Moreover, the traces of Japanese colonization are also slowly erased off from the urban fabric.
71
Figure 6-2. Historic map of Seoul124
124 Seoul, “Old Map of Seoul,” Web. 1 May 2015. http://spp.seoul.go.kr/cms/upload/board/B0026//EMB000002dc0059.jpg. 72
Seoul as an Asian model of urban transformation and development is facing a lot
of challenges and debates.125 First is the intent of Seoul agents to erase the urban legacy
left by their predecessors, as some people is arguing that this action is against the
principles of authenticity of preservation. 126 Second challenge is the wave of
globalization. Today, Seoul is also known as a center for international conventions. Being
a world city means more cultural exchanges, and increased social mobility and external
forces in recent years may potentially have influenced cultural preferences in Seoul, and
the entire Korea. Nowadays, the traditional cultures and arts, though important, are no
longer the dominant art forms on the public stages.127 The third one is the destruction of
tradition city fabric. For example, there is a unique type of built heritage in Seoul, which
is Hanok, the traditional Korean Houses. These houses are usually built close to each
other and form a district called Hanok Village. Among all these villages, one of the most
famous and largest ones is Bukchon Hanok Village. Earliest houses in Bukchon Hanok
Village could be dated all the way back to Joseon period (1392-1910).128 Instead of pure residential area, Bukchon Hanok Village is served as a popular tourist site since 2001 and people call it “the street museum in the urban core”. Unlike preservation of royal palaces and city wall is entirely under government’s management, the preservation of Hanok
Village is a little bit different. While some of them are managed and operated by
125 Nihal Perera, and Wing-Shing Tang, Transforming Asian Cities: Intellectual Impasse, Asianizing Space, and Emerging Translocalities, 21. 126 Nihal Perera, and Wing-Shing Tang, 20. 127 Yi-Sup Hong, Korea’s Self-Identity (Seoul: Yonsei University Press, 1973). 128 Ann Meejung Kim, ”Saving Bukchon: Preservation of the Hhistoric Urban District in Seoul, Korea,” Web. 1 May 2015. http://www.huichawaii.org/assets/kim,-meejung---2015-ahse-huic.pdf. 73
governments, some of the houses are still owned and preserved by private sectors. This
somehow raises some concerns and debates. First, for the houses owned by individuals, there is a danger that the occupants would like to upgrade the houses and removed the
“Hanok” style of the original structure.129 Second, the urban sprawl also brings pressure
for the preservation, as many Hanok houses are torn down and turned into multi-floor
buildings.130 Third, even for the districts managed by government, the renovation is
needed to accommodate modern visitors. This may potentially changed the interior space
of house. Lastly, some scholars also question the boundary-making preservation strategy.
It is said the Hanok houses within the central city are carefully preserved, but the houses
outside this region are put into ignorance. Realizing these challenges, a Bukchon
Preservation Plan was produced by the Seoul Metropolitan Government in December,
2001.131 The plan is focused on the preservation of the Bukchon Village, but more
importantly, it reviewed failures of the oppressive and anachronistic past policies and
emphasizes more on the gaining of public support.132
Not only specific plans are developed to protect individual heritage sites, Seoul
also includes the idea of cultural preservation into their master plan. In the Seoul 2030
Plan, it also raises the importance of citizen participation which is a constant policy
129 Alan Heyman, “Is Korea looking after its cultural heritage?” Web. 1 May 2015. http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20111024000661. 130 Discovering Korea, “Seoul Bukchon Hanok Village,” Web. 1 May 2015. http://discoveringkorea.com/081028/seoul-bukchon-hanok-village/. 131 Kahoidong. “The Bukchon Plan,” Web. 1 May 2015. http://www.kahoidong.com/En/bukchonhtm4-17_e.html. 132 Ann Meejung Kim, ”Saving Bukchon: Preservation of the Historic Urban District in Seoul, Korea”. 74
approach being practiced.133 Besides, it clearly indicates the vibrant history and cultural
landscape as one of the five major goals of the 2030 plan.134 Spatially, the plan marks out
the historic city center as the focus of cultural identity preservation (Figure 6-3).
However, this idea of preserving an old city center is arguable on certain levels as some
people think this way of preventing erasure of traditional society by westernization and
modernization is not necessary, as culture is not fixed and its inherent value is lost when
grasped too firmly.135
133 Seoul, “Seoul 2030 Plan,” Web. 1 May 2015. http://english.seoul.go.kr/policy-information/urban-planning/urban-planning/1-2030-seoul-basic-urban-plan/. 134 Ibid. 135 Nihal Perera, and Wing-Shing Tang, Transforming Asian Cities: Intellectual Impasse, Asianizing Space, and Emerging Translocalities, 20. 75
Figure 6-3: Seoul 2030 Plan Diagram on Recovery and Strengthen of Seoul’s Identity136
6.3 Summary of Lessons
Reviewing the preservation strategies and policies of Beijing and Soul provides some important lessons. First is that the sties with obvious significance like palaces are always the easiest ones to protect while the vernacular structures are always the most
136 Seoul. “Seoul 2030 Plan”. 76
challenging subjects to preserve. The preservation of Hanok in Seoul is relatively more
successful, but this success is a consequence of gentrification. The issue is not very obvious due to the overall better economic status in Seoul. Also it has already gone through the process of population relocation, which leaves less pressure on the center city.
The accomplishment of Seoul approves that certain level of gentrification is probably
necessary. On the hand, Siheyuan in Beijing approves that the instantly emergency is to
remain instead of coming up with a how to better preserve strategy. Beijing shares a
similarity with Nanjing that a large percentage of traditional housing has already been
demolished and the rest of them are also in great danger. Once these vernacular urban
spaces are completely gone, it would be too late to talk about any preservation strategies.
Third is that it is important to mark the cultural preservation as a goal instead of mission in the overall master plan. Part of the reason that preservation is always under valued is that it is considered as must-mention component in master plan instead of a guidance goal.
By clearly marking out in the plan and fully blend into the major goals of the city development like Beijing’s and Seoul’s, the urban planners are forced to come up with a more coherent balance between economic development and identity preservation.
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Chapter 7: Understanding of Contemporary Nanjing and
Historical Layering
7.1 Nanjing as a Historical City
Just like Beijing and Seoul, Nanjing is a historical city. Not only people can
find it in the historic records, but history actually left rich treasures to this piece of land.
The long time history and suffering has given it vicissitudes and the constant population
emigration and immigration has made it into a fusion of cultures: north and south.137
Unlike cities that would have several have-to-see landmarks, it is hard to pick out specific visiting sites as they are scattered around the entire Nanjing. Walking around the city, people can easily find historical traces everywhere. People describing Nanjing as a antique market, as the entire city seems to be dipped into the stream of past and you would always discover something unexpected; some people would also describe it as a giant piece of rock as history has left so many heavy marks. Walking along the Qinghai
River, people would enter the Confucius’s Temple district. The Confucius’s temple was built to worship one of the greatest philosophers in China: Confucius (Kongzi). The temple was damaged several times and was continuously restored. Therefore, people can find patches from different times on this structure. However, Confucius’s temple is not the only thing worth seeing in this area. This segments of Qinhuai River is used to be popular commercial district with wealthy people’s housing and all the fancy restaurants;
137 Xinhuanet, “Mixed Feeling of Nanjing Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection,” Web. 1 May 2015. http://www.js.xinhuanet.com/zhuanlan/2006-09/12/content_8019892.htm. 78
it used to be the agriculture field; it used to be the examination location for feudal China; it used be literati’s gathering places, etc. There is not anything too fancy to look at, but every step in this area is a trace of past history. Nowadays, this area becomes a tourist site, and a place for people to celebrate Chinese’s festivals. Going a little further people would find the relics of Yuan dynasty city wall. The ancient city wall in Nanjing was built under the command of the first emperor of Ming Dynasty named Zhu Yuanzhang. While in the past, the city wall was built for political and military reason, today it has almost lost its practical functionality. Therefore, throughout the history, some of the city wall was gradually torn down for the purpose of city expansion or were destroyed during the warfare. Today, still a large percentage of the city is remained intact and it becomes an important cultural symbol of Nanjing and a recreation destiny for locals.138 The city wall becomes part of people’s secular life as residents usually utilize the top of the city wall to take a walk and children would play in the surrounding parks. However, a plan to nominate the city wall for the world heritage site which pushes the discussion on proper preservation on the top of table. Some of the greening growing on the walls is removed, and some of the deteriorated part is fixed. Though the preservation work is done following the conservation guideline, local people find the “cleaner” looking city way has lost part of its characteristics. Then, if walking back toward the center city, people would discover the boulevard Zhongshan Road with huge sycamore trees planted on two sides.
138 Nanjing Ming City Wall Museum, Vicissitudes of City Walls, 4. 79
Many buildings along the streets have a very unique style that is neither traditional nor
modern, and these are the building built during the Republic China period. This sense of
Republic China atmosphere is continuously celebrated in Nanjing’s fabric and becomes
part of Nanjing’s local identity.
7.2 Nanjing as a Historical Imperial City
While Beijing and Soul are all famous for their ancient palaces in the center of the
city, Nanjing is almost standing as an exception. The only “palace” that still exists in
Nanjing is the Ming Palace (明故宫) which was built during the early Ming Dynasty.
However, nowadays, if people go to visit Ming Palace, they would hardly find any built
structures on top of the earth. In fact, the palace was slowly destructed and torn down
starting in Qing Dynasty. What has left on site is more like relics. Nowadays, the site of
Ming Palace has been turned into a park and people would have the opportunity to walk
around and imagine its flourishing past.
Besides palaces, the imperial mausoleum Ming Xiao Ling (明孝陵) was
preserved in much better condition and was listed as a World Heritage Site. Historically,
Mingxiao Ling is a great demonstration of ancient Chinese theory for mausoleum and the
remaining architecture is also a representation of the craftsmanship at that time. For
residents in Nanjing, walking along the Ming Xiao Ling which sits at the foot of Purple
Mountain (紫金山) is also a great experience of enjoying the beauty of nature.
80
7.3 Cotemporary Historic Preservation and City Planning of Nanjing
Today, the development of Nanjing is facing severe challenges. Being the capital of Jiangsu, it serves as the political and commercial center to lead other cities in the
province; being the neighbor of Shanghai, it has to compete with Shanghai for existing or
potential resources and opportunities. At the same time, Nanjing is known as a historical
city with intense cultural relics and historical sites. The dilemma between preservation
and renovation therefore leads to a series of discussion and argument.
Nanjing reached its current scale just in recent decades. Under the special historic
context of China, Nanjing has quickly adopted the planning theory and expands to its
current metropolitan scale in twenty to thirty years, while the cities in western countries
would take several hundreds of years.139 The master plan in the past tends to focus on the
“big picture” of the city by emphasizing the economic benefits and pushing the boundaries of metropolis further. The fast urban sprawl and construction of satellite cities is one of the results of this process. However in recent years, this trend is slowed down a little bit and more and more detailed planning documents have been released. Except the specialized planning documents that include preservation plan, there are also many other documents or regulations that specifically focus on a smaller scale especially within the city center：the “Notice Regarding to the Protection of City Wall (关于保护城墙的通
告)” in 1982, the “Nanjing Regulations for Protection of Cultural Relics (南京市文物保
139 Xi Chen, "The Four Phases of Urbanization in Nanjing," Web. 1 May 2015. http://finance.china.com.cn/roll/20130422/1406965.shtml. 81
护条例)” in 1988, the “Methods to protect and mange Nanjing City Wall (南京城墙保护
管理方法)” in1996, etc. All of this shows phenomena that of preserving Nanjing as a
culturally significant city is recognized on a city level and a more systematically
organized law system is developing in order to create a better Nanjing. While more and
more laws and regulations have also come out for the purpose of protecting the cultural
relics, the importance of cultural landscape is still less mentioned in the current master
plan.
At the same time, the proper management of the historically or culturally
important sites/district and how to utilize the regulations to realize the protection are still
under the process of development.140 Nanjing has a relatively complicated heritage management system, as all the departments in the government have a saying in the decision making. The proper management would have to coordinate with departments including cultural relics, landscape, tourism, territory, construction, finance, etc.141 Some of the historic districts are managed by multiple agencies which further complicate the situation. In addition, the preservation would needs significant amount of financial inputs.
The government is facing the dilemma of billions RMB input with very slow return of money, and it has to balance it with the investment on other municipal construction projects.142
140 Municipal Literature and History (Learning) Committee, “Thirteen Suggestion Regarding to the Nanjing Cultural Heritage Protection,” Web. 1 May 2015. http://3y.uu456.com/bp_1hz3b20czo7b3ef98ngm_1.html. 141 Nanjing People's Political Consultative Conference, "Condition and Suggestion on Nanjing Historic and Cultural Heritage Protection". 142 Lei Wang, “Dilemma and Win-win Situation of Nanjing urban construction andCultural Heritage Protection“, 60. 82
7.4 Historical Layering
As described before, the urban fabric is a reflection of cities’ transformation
through time, and people always see it from present’s perspective. Therefore, only
understanding the history of a city is not enough, as it is also important to see how each historical layering is kept and preserved in today’s fabric.
This series of maps included below are intended to map all the Cultural Relics
Protection Sites of Nanjing from different periods of time. The base map used is the regional map of Nanjing that is included in the urban planning plan of Nanjing, and the location data comes from the list that is produced by Nanjing Cultural Relics Bureau, and it includes all the sites listed by June 10th, 2006. By 2006, there are in total 387 locations
that are listed. All the sites listed on this list are important sites that are recognized by the
government. The arrangement of the maps is following a chronological sequence:
Paleolithic, Neolithic, Shang & Zhou Dynasties, Spring & Autumn Period, Han Dynasty,
East Han Dynasty, Three Kingdom Period, West Jin Dynasty, East Jin Dynasty, Six
Dynasties, Tang Dynasty, Five Dynasty, Song Dynasty, Yuan Dynasty, Ming Dynasty,
Qing Dynasties, and Republic China. This mapping process is used to examine how the historically important sites are inherited through history and how they are reflected in the
urban fabric of today’s Nanjing.
83
Figure 7-1: Paleolithic Sites143
143 Data Source: “Cultural Relic Protection Sites Produced by Nanjing Cultural Relics Bureau, June 10th, 2006” - Zemin Su, Urban Planning History of Nanjing, 336-347. 84
Figure 7-2: Neolithic Sites144
144 Data Source: “Cultural Relic Protection Sites Produced by Nanjing Cultural Relics Bureau, June 10th, 2006” - Zemin Su, Urban Planning History of Nanjing, 336-347. 85
Figure 7-3: Shang & Zhou Dynasties Sites145
145 Data Source: “Cultural Relic Protection Sites Produced by Nanjing Cultural Relics Bureau, June 10th, 2006” - Zemin Su, Urban Planning History of Nanjing, 336-347. 86
Figure 7-4: Han Dynasty Sites146
146 Data Source: “Cultural Relic Protection Sites Produced by Nanjing Cultural Relics Bureau, June 10th, 2006” - Zemin Su, Urban Planning History of Nanjing, 336-347. 87
Figure 7-5: Six Dynasties Sites147
147 Data Source: “Cultural Relic Protection Sites Produced by Nanjing Cultural Relics Bureau, June 10th, 2006” - Zemin Su, Urban Planning History of Nanjing, 336-347. 88
Figure 7-6: Tang Dynasty Sites148
148 Data Source: “Cultural Relic Protection Sites Produced by Nanjing Cultural Relics Bureau, June 10th, 2006” - Zemin Su, Urban Planning History of Nanjing, 336-347. 89
Figure 7-7: Five Dynasties Sites149
149 Data Source: “Cultural Relic Protection Sites Produced by Nanjing Cultural Relics Bureau, June 10th, 2006” - Zemin Su, Urban Planning History of Nanjing, 336-347. 90
Figure 7-8: Song Dynasty Sites150
150 Data Source: “Cultural Relic Protection Sites Produced by Nanjing Cultural Relics Bureau, June 10th, 2006” - Zemin Su, Urban Planning History of Nanjing, 336-347. 91
Figure 7-9: Yuan Dynasty Site151
151 Data Source: “Cultural Relic Protection Sites Produced by Nanjing Cultural Relics Bureau, June 10th, 2006” - Zemin Su, Urban Planning History of Nanjing, 336-347. 92
Figure 7-10: Ming Dynasty Sites152
152 Data Source: “Cultural Relic Protection Sites Produced by Nanjing Cultural Relics Bureau, June 10th, 2006” - Zemin Su, Urban Planning History of Nanjing, 336-347. 93
Figure 7-11: Qing Dynasty Sites153
153 Data Source: “Cultural Relic Protection Sites Produced by Nanjing Cultural Relics Bureau, June 10th, 2006” - Zemin Su, Urban Planning History of Nanjing, 336-347. 94
Figure 7-12: Republic Period Sites154
154 Data Source: “Cultural Relic Protection Sites Produced by Nanjing Cultural Relics Bureau, June 10th, 2006” - Zemin Su, Urban Planning History of Nanjing, 336-347. 95
Figure 7-13: Modern Era (People’s Republic of China) Sites155
155 Data Source: “Cultural Relic Protection Sites Produced by Nanjing Cultural Relics Bureau, June 10th, 2006” - Zemin Su, Urban Planning History of Nanjing, 336-347. 96
By looking at these maps, it is not hard tell that history is a successive and cumulative process as each historic period has left some historical traces in the urban fabric of Nanjing. Moreover, this historical layering study is also helpful as it helps to reveal some thinking relating to the preservation. First, the historical layering echoes with the history of Nanjing. During the period like Six Dynasties, Ming Dynasty and Republic
China periods, while the development of city is accelerating, and the culture development would also accelerate. Therefore, more historic sites are left in the urban fabric of China.
Oppositely, during the period of Sui and Tang Dynasty, while the city development was suspended or even stopped, less heritage sites are kept. Second, the historic layering demonstrates the uniqueness of a city’s identity. By looking at the history of China generally, most people would assume that the development of cities in glorious dynasties like Han, Tang and Song would be most predominant. However, the left historic sites of these dynasties in Nanjing are very limited. This phenomenon shows the different treatment between imperial and non-imperial cities. And therefore, the history of China cannot fully represent the history of a city. Third, the city center always has the largest amount of historic sites. As seen in the maps, there are more sites located in the city center than boundaries. This is understandable as the city center is the core of all type development and modern development tremendously expand the boundary of Nanjing.
However, it is important to notice that there are still many sties located in the margins of the city. These sties are also worth preserving and do not have a less value than the sties
97
in the city center and the ignorance of these sites become key issues of urban planning.
Fourth, the sites that are political or religiously important like palaces, cemeteries and temples are usually easy to be recognized and well preserved. This partly demonstrates that sites that contain collective memory are usually considered more important. Fifth, the more recent a site is, the larger chance that it would be preserved. The sites from the Qing
Dynasty and Republic China period are mostly well preserved, while the numbers of site before Qing Dynasty are usually limited, Lastly, the historic sites also reflect the urban planning for of their times. During the feudal dynasties, most of the sites are located around the palaces (nowadays city center), except some cemeteries and temples that have to bee settled in the margins. And in Republic Period, there is a dense concentration of historic sites along the Zhongshan Road, which is a major boulevard developed during the planning process at that time.
Besides these findings, some limitations of this historical layering study are needed to be mentioned. Firstly, the data source is limited, as only the sites are listed in the government document are mapped. The list includes some vernacular traditional housing and traditional streetscape, but there are also a lot important sites that are recognizable at a community scale (including street names and streetscapes) are not included in the listing. For example, there are important restaurants or stores that have
opened in a community for decades, and they are well known among local residents.
Moreover, there are traditional craftsmen living in the city which inherit important skills
98
that are considered as intangible heritage.156 Excluding these would more or less affect the comprehensiveness of interpretation. Second, the listing of historic sites should not be considered as a complete list of all the sites in Nanjing. Nanjing has constantly been occupied and later construction is built on top of previous historic layer. Therefore, this listing only records that sites that has already been discovered or excavated. Third, it that the mapping is lacking an understanding of the environment surrounds the administrative boundary of Nanjing. Since the data only listed the sites “within” Nanjing, all the sites fit perfectly into the Nanjing area which gives an impression that space outside Nanjing does not have any historic sites. However, this is not true, and if more information could be found, it would be better to include peripheral sites as well. Lastly, the listing is done in 2006 and many changes have show changes in Nanjing. For example, in one of the place named Lingzhuang Xiang (绫庄巷), there are several traditional housings that are listed as important historic sites. However, two of them have been damaged in a fire accident.157 Also, since the district is preparing for rehabilitation and many houses that
are not considered as “historic valuable” are under the process of demolition, the exterior
wall of the historic houses are also stained by the demolition imprint.158
156 Xinhuanet, “Mixed Feeling of Nanjing Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection”. 157 Feng Yu, “Two Qing Dynasty Houses at Lingzhuang Xiang were Burnt,” Web. 1 May 2015. http://jlwb.njnews.cn/html/2014-06/13/content_1640471.htm. 158 Qiufen Cong, and Yu Feng, “Moving Imprint on the Walls of Qing Dynasty Historic Site,” Web. 20 April 2015. http://news.sina.com.cn/o/2013-10-26/044028536083.shtml. 99
Figure 7-14: The historic housing at Lingzhuang Xiang with demolition imprint159
159 Qiufen Cong, and Yu Feng, “Moving Imprint on the Walls of Qing Dynasty Historic Site”. 100
Chapter 8: Discussion
8.1 Values of the ancient and contemporary city fabric
8.1.1 City through the process of development
Looking through the history of Nanjing, most of the time the development of the city is steady and gentle. The only moment that severe changes may have taken place is during specific turbulent periods: warfare, dynasties changes, natural disaster, etc.
Therefore, it is believed that a city’s evolution of the change, if not for unavoidable reasons, should be maintained in this natural slow pace. Nowadays, people are actively involved in the process of erasure and reconstruction, due to the need of modernization.160 Nanjing, like many other cities in China, follows this strategy in order to keep up the pace of development. The gentle transformation of past built environment is okay, as the shape of a city is never complete and never at rest.161 Nonetheless, if comparing with the western cities, the speed and the scale that have been adopted by
Chinese cities are too fast and too extensive. All of this may bring potential harms, and it is specifically dangerous from the perspective historic preservation when the level of destruction is out of control. While the unique residential neighborhoods are demolished, the “modern” and “international” style buildings are erected, and people are relocated to different places within the city, people may start to lose their sense of self-identity.
Certain forms of lives, certain types of traditions require a corresponding environment for
160 Sze Tsung Leong, History Images, 138. 161 Spiro Kostof, The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History (Boston: Bulfinch Press, 1991), 13. 101
them to take place. While the environment is erased and disappears, the related culture and tradition will slowly be lost in time simultaneously. Moreover, this sense of self-erasure may even lead to social problems. These are the problems that are experienced by many cities, and so do Nanjing. The old city area of Nanjing is used to be the places where traditional residential neighborhoods, what accompanying with the architectural styles is what people usually called courtyard-style-living. During the recent movements of rehabilitation or urban regeneration, over ninety percent of the original housing is gone. The high-rises residential real estate projects have replaced the original vernacular buildings. Not only the houses are demolished, but the people the families which used to occupy these spaces are relocate to the margin of the city, as many of original residents cannot afford the raised housing price. This gentrification process, which has experienced by the western countries, are restaging in the Chinese context.162
Moreover, through the transformation of life style and the globalization, the living culture includes the style of clothing, eating, living, traveling have all been changed, and the original tradition has been further isolated and marginalized.163 Apparently, what have
not been solved in the western world are also challenges in the Asian cities. On the other
hand, there are not direct conflict between gentrification and historic preservation, and it
is more like an unavoidable historical trend. What is more problematic is that there is no
mechanism or institution to control the level and speed of transformation. And moreover,
162 Brian Greenfield, “Marketing the Past: Historic Preservation in Providence”, Giving Preservation a History: Histories of Historic Preservation in the United State (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), 180. 163 Yuanfeng Wang, “Study on Residential Integration in the Protection and Renewal of the Old Town of South Nanjing,” Nanjing: Southeast University (Master Thesis), 2011. 102
there is no clear awareness of the value of preservation among common people, as the only thing most people care about is if the new housing would satisfy their needs of living.164
8.1.2 City as a collective memory
Memory is an extremely tricky subject to talk about. First, it is very time sensitive.
Something that has happened long time ago would always be difficult to recall, and it seems as a lost piece of memory. However, during a specific time or by getting in touch with a specific object, this piece of memory would possibly be triggered and brought back fresh again. This is what people usually call as nostalgia, and it is a similar case when talking about the memory toward a city. Each generation’s memory toward the same city is different as the city is constantly changing and people tend to experience the different phases of a city. However, when the younger generation listens to the memory transmitted by the elder generation, they would have an imaginary picture of that piece of memory even though they never truly see by themselves. Like many younger generation like the vintage stuff from 70s and 80s, even though they have never really been through that period of time and that is why memory is sensitive. On one aspect it seems that old memory is kept washed away by new memory, but on the other hand some of the memory has a timeless manner into it. Especially in the 21st century nowadays, some of
164 Yuanfeng Wang, “Study on Residential Integration in the Protection and Renewal of the Old Town of South Nanjing”. 103
the past would be able to record down through different forms of media, and this sense of
timelessness gets even stronger. Second, it is hard to distinguish memory from “history”.
Academically, it seems that memory is a more subjective term, and history is more objective. Memory could be created; modified, erased, and different memory toward a same event could be formed by looking from different perspective. History, however, is
expected to be fair and factual. Nonetheless, this is not the case. Memory and history are
interchangeable at some cases. People would call the impression of a recent event
memory. However, if a certain memory has passed long time ago and there is no way to
verify anymore, people may switch to consider is a part of “history”. For example, people
would automatically consider the events recorded in the historic documents as “factual history”, but how do we know that it is not a record of the writer’s memory and how do we know that the recorders did not make any mistake? In addition, people consider the ancient planning processes a passed history, whereas from the city’s perspective it is the trace of past and “memory” of a city.165 As a result, even though the memory is an
important component to form city’s identity, different people would possibly come up
with different way of reading towards it and this thinking on this subject is intended to
intrigue a wider discussion.
Since this research is about a city, therefore when talking about the memory of a
city, the term of collective memory is adopted here. What is collective memory? Actually
165 Zeming Su, Urban Planning History of Nanjing, 331. 104
different articles have been arguing the meaning of term collective memory:
1) Collective memory is considered as a fabricated version of personal memory that fits
into societal environment;166
2) Collective memory as national traumatic events. And “With the passing of time the
details of specific events fade as they taken from the forefront of our mind and placed
into the mainstream of our memory”;167
3) Maurice Halbwachs’s theory on collective memory as a shared pool of information
held inn the memories of two or more members of a group.168
For the discussion of this paper, the meaning of collective memory is closer to the
third one which a memory that is shared by a larger number of people. Similar with
individual memory, the collective memory could also be shared, passed on and constructed and it could be in the form of either a set of ideas, images, or feelings.169
Moreover, the collective memory could also be stored in space. Therefore, the city fabric should not simply be a cold emotionless structure, but it is also the reset place of collective spatial memory.170 Even though the memory is sometimes interchangeable
with history, but memory is actually more flexible and embrace more as it would also
accommodate subjective emotions which is usually avoid in the historic context.
Even though collective memory is shared, but this does not mean that it would
166 Noa Gedi, and Yigal Elam, "Collective Memory -- What Is It?" History & Memory 8.1 (1996): 30. 167 UIC. ”Collective Memory,” Web. 20 April 2015. https://www.uic.edu/classes/comm/comm200am/teamprojects/MemoryTechnologies/Collective_Memory.htm. 168 Haim Weinberg, The Paradox of Internet Groups: Along in the Presence of Virtual Others (London: Karnac Books, 2014), 143. 169 Ibid. 170 Maurice Halbwachs, The Collective Memory, 7. 105
remained unchanged. Also by using different criteria and including different, the content of collective memory would also be changed. For example, the memory toward the form of family is different in different times of history. in 1980s China is about the collective dream toward nationalism and family members has a stronger sense of connection; and in
1990s when the national market is open the individual dream of wealth is developed and the old big family is divided up into smaller families. When the society is undergoing changing, and certain things are slowly disappearing, the sense of nostalgia would be developed by people in order to cherish that piece of memory. And this nostalgia trend it not a simply way to express ones’ feelings but it is an action to recapture one’s identity.
During turbulent periods, when the form of a city is changing, people would feel this loss of original identity and they would eager to look for a new one. This is why that many literature at special period of history like warfare would like to looking into past as an effort of root-searching. Writers or artist are always the avant-garde of the trend, and the city fabric would respond to the changes in a slower pace. For example, when many of the ancient traditions are lost and many ancient structures are destructed, recent China has an archaizing trend to mimic the ancient form of architecture. However, this would raise another argument on authenticity from the perspective of preservation, as many archaizing architecture are imagined ones and usually built out in modern materials like concrete and metal. Even though this may not acceptable in the expertise of preservation, but it is important to understand it is a natural mechanism to respond to identity
106
researching.
It is obvious that collective memory is important, but is individual memory
helpful and useful in the identity shaping of a city? While Maurice Halbwachs’s theory
emphasizes that any human’s memory cannot avoid social impact. Therefore, he believed
that no matter how personal one’s feeling is, it was embedded in a social situation which
is still somehow collective memory.171 This idea, of course, is criticized by some
scholars as Halbwachs completely ignored the genre of individual psychology. 172
Nonetheless, the answer toward the question is probably still yes as it is crucial to admit that collective memory is composed by individual memory. If the individual memory is shared with other people, the memory becomes collective memory on a larger scale, but from the perspective of that person, that piece of memory is still his or her own individual memory. If not trying to discuss the psychological terms in depth, individual memory is something that ties directly with the built environment. For example, for people who have grown in the old Nanjing city, his or her childhood memory was tied to the city fabric as they will remember how they were playing in the historical houses and alleys. This type of memory, if not used for certain special purposes like writings or public media interviewing, may neither have a large value towards collective memory nor would be recorded in any form of archive, but this type of memory still cannot be excluded from the city’s memory. Moreover, this individual’s behavior would also leave traces in the
171 Maurice Halbwachs, The Collective Memory, 7. 172 Ibid. 107
fabric of the city.
In all what is addressed here is that city fabric is actually very complicated and
delicate and many more efforts should be put into it. Just like both physical health and psychological health is crucial for human beings, people should not ignore the
“psychological health” of the built environment. In addition, when people further examine the tradition of memorizing under specific context, the entire discussion would become even more tangling. Appreciation toward the ancient relics is a global phenomenon, and in Chinese the idea of mediating the past is called Huaigu (怀古), and people can find traces of this type of emotion in the poems written thousands years ago.
Whereas, Chinese attitudes toward “lamenting the past” is very different from the western conception. In western languages word, the relics of historic built environment is also
called “ruin” and this word is originally associated with the idea of “falling stones”.173
This is because the architectural remains in wets are usually masonry structure.174 When looking back at China, however, even though many poems are dedicated to the idea of memorizing the past, few built structures are kept as “ruins”. In China, including other countries in Asia actually has a long history of using timber structure, and this type of architecture requires constant redecoration and restoration.175 Wood structures can hardly
have the eternal sense like the masonry structure in the west, and few of the ancient
structure can be preserved. A art historian Wu Huang has done a research by examining
173 Hung Wu, A Story of Ruins: Presence and Absence in Chinese Art and Visual Culture, 7. 174 Ibid. 175 Hung Wu, 8. 108
the architectural structures in painting from the fifth century B.C. to mid-nineteenth
century AD, but the architecture show no trace of damage, even artist has inscribed a poem next to the image describing their broken roofs and ruined entrenchment.176
Therefore, when the western worlds have a consistency attitude in the mental and physical way of memorizing the past, Chinese cities including Nanjing do not. For
Chinese people, the emotion of lamenting past is not purely reflected on the physical environment, but on an imagined city image. Through the history, people would have a fixed imagination toward the city space. For example, people would imagine Beijing as a walled city and Shanghai as a metropolis.177 Nowadays, the communication between
west and east becomes denser, and the idea of preserving ruins is more accommodated in the contemporary context of China. The broken or incomplete cultural ruins like city walls would have a larger chance preserving and the renovation of old historic structure are slowed down. Moreover, the atrocity, and wounded history would even be celebrated especially in the art form, as “Chinese finally faced what they had been avoiding for centuries: whereas they had rejected the preservation and representation of ruined building because of their inherent sense of danger, the same implication legitimated architectural ruins in the modern period”.178 Therefore, the Chinese today’s idea toward
preservation at certain stances is closer to the western theory, and it is actually could be
considered as a process of simplification as the relationship between psychological and
176 Hung Wu, A Story of Ruins: Presence and Absence in Chinese Art and Visual Culture, 13. 177 Yingjin Zhang, “Remapping Beijing: Polylocality, Globalization, Cinema, Other Cities,” Other Worlds: Urban Imaginaries in a Globalizing Age (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 224. 178 Hung Wu, 121. 109
physical memory is less contradictory. At the same time however, the status of memory becomes even more prominent on certain stances as Chinese people are more willing to celebrate it physically.
8.2 Values and Limitation of Preservation and Urban Planning
Since the connection between historic preservation and urban planning would be further discussed, it is important to get a more comprehensive understanding of these two professional fields. When treating them as two professions or two independent practical theories, it is not difficult to discover they both have their distinctive values, but at the same time they both have their own limitations. Values are limitations demonstrates that neither of these two fields could operate on their own without having impacts on the outside fields, which therefore become the potential bridges that could connect two fields together.
8.2.1 Historic Preservation
Historic preservation is considered as a trend of history and the need for society development and civilization progress.179 The idea of preservation can found traces in
Europe starting around fifth century as the Roman emperor announced that the temple and monuments built by ancestors should not be destroyed.180 However, the modern
179 Qirong Li, Urban Planning and Historic Preservation, 1. 180 Qing Cai, “Inheritance and Regeneration of Historic Sights Environment: Using Nanjing and Shaoxing as Examples,” Nanjing: Southeast University (Master Thesis), 2003, 12. 110
preservation movements initiated in Europe, United States and Japan has begun in 19th century by founding national conservation agencies and enacting laws, and now have formed a relatively efficient system.181 China, however, even though has initiated the
idea of preservation dated back to 11th century during Tang Dynasty, the contemporary
has begun in 20th century and it is still under the process of Developing.182 Now the
higher the modernization level of city and society, the more people would cherish and appreciate historic cultures. 183 If putting more rationale into the frame, historical
preservation could further contribute to a city’s historical and cultural values through
preservation of subjects that may have long been ignored or unnoticed. In addition,
historic preservation sometimes function as a mirror as it reflects the decision making
result of a society through the examination of what has been preserved, and how they
were preserved.184 As a result, if used properly, historic preservation would strengthen
the city’s sense of identity. Also the proper preservation would bring potential economic
benefits to the city as the city with a unique identity would easily market and brand itself.
By preserving important historic landscape, preservation could also help to improve a
place’s environment.
At the same time, the preservation also has limitations. First, it usually targets on separate sites or projects, which is more like a point to point approach. Although the
181 Qirong Li, Urban Planning and Historic Preservation, 55. 182 Qing Cai, “Inheritance and Regeneration of Historic Sights Environment: Using Nanjing and Shaoxing as Examples,” 13. 183 Qirong Li, 20. 184 Randall Mason, “Theoretical and Practical Arguments for Values-Centered Preservation,” CRM: the Journal of Heritage Stewardship 13.3 (2006): 21. 111
concept of preservation/heritage planning is introduced, most of the time it refers to the planning for a specific site which is still bounded in a micro scale. This scale of focus misfits the macro-scale one which is typically looked at by urban planning. As a result, preservation theory would seldom directly have reference toward the urban planning policies and the city’s master plan would only consider preservation as a fraction of the
“history” category. Second, preservation is never considered as the ultimate goal of planning throughout history, but rather a by-product during the course of evolution. Even in the ancient times, preservation action would be adopted only if it would bring political, military or ritual benefits.185 Third, even in the field of preservation, there are confusion
and discrepancy between different preservation theories. Even though different theories
have been developed, and different charters and recommendation are put on the
discussion table at a global level, contradiction and arguments are still unavoidable. The
Viollet-le-Duc’s preservation history is different from Ruskin’s theory on what level of
completeness should be maintained in the preservation process, and Venice Charter and
Nara Document would have subtle difference in the attitude toward the definition of
authenticity. Moreover, as mentioned in the collective memory section, the internal and
historic mechanism of memorization and lamenting are unique in different cultures.
When international conversation is necessary, misunderstanding of unique culture
phenomenon is also unavoidable. Fourth, preservation is a highly dependent field and
185 Delin Zhuang, and Jingxiang Zhang, Development and Construction History of Chinese Cities, 158. 112
cannot success without other fields’ help. While prioritizing the historic values, other
realms of importance including the social dimensions are more or less ignored.186
Recently, preservation promotes the concept of value-based preservation by specify and evaluate different values a site could bring. By being integrated thinking the social role of preservation and reorganizing conservation decision making, preservation could connect with different potential outsider fields and expand its own vision187. However, what
accompanying with it is the more complicated preservation work as it involves parsing
broad notions of value and more precise understanding of different conceptions of
value.188 What’s more, sometimes this type of connection is out of preservation’s own
wishful thinking and fails to become a two way conversation. For example, conservation
experts would treat heritage as priceless estate, economists consider it as a set of goods
and services that could be calculated an appraised in terms of prices.189 And even for more avant-garde experts, so called “pro-market preservationists” who joint aesthetic interest to economic growth sometimes unintentionally sacrifice the social values of a place and end up with the phenomenon of gentrification of the neighborhood.190
8.2.2 Urban Planning
Even though ancient China also have its own practical planning theories, the
186 Randall Mason, “Be Interested and Beware: Joining Economic Valuation and Heritage Conservation,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 14.4 (2008): 315. 187 Randall Mason, 304. 188 Randall Mason, “Theoretical and Practical Arguments for Values-Centered Preservation,” 23. 189 Randall Mason, “Be Interested and Beware: Joining Economic Valuation and Heritage Conservation,” 304. 190 Briann Greenfield, “Marketing the Past: Historic Preservation in Providence”, 180. 113
urban planning theories that are talked under the contemporary context originates from western countries. After the industrial revolution in the west, the cities’ function and structure become more and more complicated, therefore scholars and designers started to develop the theory of urban planning.191 Therefore, the current main stream urban planning theory is using the Architectural and Engineering theory as basis.192 Nowadays, the urban planning’s research direction has switched to a more comprehensive perspective which it involves a more variety of subjects. However, the goal of urban planning is kept unchanged: which is to create a better form of space for people through rational speculation.
However, urban planning still has certain level of limitations. First, the urban planning is focusing on district planning or traffic planning, which is more like a line-area approach. Comparing with the point-to-point approach of preservation, there shows a discrepancy in scale and ignorance on the micro scale planning. Second, urban planning is always targeting on improving or revitalizing the city, which is a process to push a city upward, whereas these criteria sometimes would conflict with the goals of preservation.
Also if looking at the evolution of the city, like Nanjing, ups of cities always come with falls. Therefore it is important to prepare the city to face the decline but typical urban planning seldom talks about that. However, this is probably the chance where historic preservation could take in. Then again the urban planning mainly works around economic
191 Delin Zhuang, and Jingxiang Zhang, Development and Construction History of Chinese Cities, 1. 192 Ibid. 114
development. Even though the idea of culture is also talked about in urban planning, it is
not part of the major goals which shows a certain level of neglect of promoting local
culture. Third, the discrepancy between the ancient Chinese planning theories and
western planning theories may also bring problems. Chinese cities’ adoption of western
planning theories is based on a specific context of history. If using western planning theories carelessly, there would be danger of losing good characteristics of Chinese cities, and ending up with cities that lack individual identity and cultural confidence.193 Fourth, there is also discrepancy between regulating and practicing.194 Even though the related
urban planning policies are produced, if not acknowledging the public and accompanying
with practical punishments, people may do thing that are completely against the approved
laws.195
8.2.3 Potential problems and conflict
Though cooperation is taken place between historic preservation and urban
planning at many levels, the division between the two fields is still quite clear. If
considering the two professional fields as two rectangles that sit beside each other, then
there would be a slightly touching line or a small overlapping part, and this is the place
where less concern is put in by either field. Ideally this overlapping area should be the
point that potentially connects the two fields. However, in the reality, it is more often to
193 Jianjun Huang. Research on China Ancient Capitals Selection and Local Planning Layout Thinking, 11. 194 Xi Chen. “The Four Phases of Urbanization in Nanjing”. 195 Douban, “The Emergency of Protection of Naning as a Prominent Historic and Cultural City,” Web. 1 May 2015. http://www.douban.com/group/topic/6451635/. 115
see that both field show awareness and respect each other’s specialty, and at the same time each field is slightly avoiding getting too involved in each other’s domain. This is probably a common dilemma that each research filed would encounter when trying to collaborate with other fields. While respecting while integrating at the same time is tough, frequent bidirectional conversation become very crucial.
Even when the two fields try to collaborate, dilemma would also be raised. For example, the urban planning tries to emphasize more on economic values and improving the condition of the city at the same time. Hence, one of the approaches of planning is to promote the idea of regeneration or rehabilitation. This is the case that has taken place in
Nanjing, as ninety percent of the old city has been rehabilitated by 2003, as a way to respond to the need of modernization.196 This is not a bad thing as rehabilitation would refurbish and upgrade the outdated infrastructure of the district. However, through the perspective of preservation experts, rehabilitation is just like the gentrification process in
America. Even though the generally condition of the district is improved, but the sense of original characteristic of “Nanjing Old City” has lost forever. Since urban planning is close to the design field, people would imagine it as an innovative strategy to create things, but ignore the fact the creation always come along with destruction. As a result, preservationists often become advocators and oppose to developers moralistically or politically, and this becomes a mainstay of preservation’s theory and action. 197
196 Jia Wang, “Guardian War of Historic City,” Web. 1 May 2015. http://www.huaxia.com/zhwh/whrd/2011/01/2260629.html. 197 Max Page, and Randall Mason, “Rethinking the Roots of the Historic Preservation Movement,” Giving 116
Developers are all about seeking private gain. In order to avoid irreconcilable conflicts,
preservationists usually have to accommodate with developers, and try to bending over
backward not to be against development.198 This is not to say that urban planning only
focuses on the economic benefits, but there is a trend of over technicalization and
utilitarianism in the planning field.199 In order to create a seamless conversation, all the realistic, cognitive, practical, economic and technical aspects and benefits have to take into consideration and to what extent the compromise could go becomes another difficult question to answer.200
8.3 Intangible Cultural Landscape
8.3.1 Public Media
Public media can be used as a way to promoting certain ideas, for example there
is an online advocate calling out the emergent need to preserve the old city of Nanjing as only two percent of historic district are remained by 2009.201 The public media becomes
a platform to advocate public’s ideas and sometimes this way of expressing is more
efficient. Another example is that in recent years, some part of Nanjing is cutting down plane trees for traffic expansion. Nanjing for a long time since the Republic China period
Preservation A History: Histories of Historic Preservation in the United State (New York and London: Routledge. 2004), 16. 198 Ibid. 199 Shuping Chen, Urban Planning in the Ethical Concerns, Nanjing: Nanjing Normal University (Master Thesis), 2007, 20. 200 Lei Wang, “Dilemma and Win-win Situation of Nanjing urban construction andCultural Heritage Protection,“ 60. 201 Chao Meng, “Concern for the Cultural Relics Protection Situation,” Web. 1 May 2015. http://guoqing.china.com.cn/2013-11/06/content_30514129.htm. 117
is famous for the large plane trees growing along boulevard and their huge canopies are great shading for the locals at summer time. While some specific trees that over certain years of age or have important historic values are recorded under the preservation list, most of the street trees are not. Cutting down street trees are municipal projects that do not need public hearing. When some people discovered that some of the plane trees that occupy an important part of city memory were cut down for the convenience of metro construction, there was a huge campaign through the public media including television, newspaper and internet that tried to advocate the preservation of these trees. When the advocacy caught the attention of the government, there was an announcement going out by promising most of trees would be replanted instead of cutting down. Even though it is said that survival rate of these tress is only eighteen percent, this event still contain a deeper meaning by demonstrating the power of public media.202 On the other hand, public media can be simply used as a way to record and document. The forms of this type of information vary: some are prose, some are tourism book, some are maps, and some are photographic photos. All these forms can be considered as intangible cultural memory as it includes heavy trace of personal emotion. During this research, many resources that fall into this category are examined. There are travel books that record the author’s impression of Nanjing in 1970s, and there are photo albums that recorded important landmarks and neighborhoods of Nanjing during 1930s that has long gone. Moreover,
202 Rongwei Gao, “Nanjing Plane Trees: The Soul of A City,” Web. 1 May 2015. http://www.greentimes.com/green/news/stwh/stwx/content/2013-11/29/content_242781.htm. 118
there are books that collect all different news from Chinese, Japanese and western media
on the event of 1937 Nanjing Massacre. This information was once fact telling
information, but when it is pieced together under today’s context, it becomes important
historical data. Public media has long been a prominent way of informing and advocating.
Today with the wide use of internet media, this advantage stands out even more. For
example while in the past, news transmitting takes a long time, internet can tremendously
reduce it. This super-efficiency is a merit, but we cannot ignore that it also has
shortcoming as it can also help to spread wrong or misleading information without
verification.
8.3.2 Approaching Dark History
While Nanjing serves as the capital of several dynasties, the destruction of the
city’s fabric and the melodrama of the city’s memory cannot be avoided to talk about.
People have different theories toward the so called dark history. Some people believe it is
important to exaggerating the dark history and turn it into melodrama to heal203. Some people think it is important to come up with a subjective version of history in order to find a way to let the dark history to make sense204. And some people also think to forget
is a better way to heal from dark history205.
All these theories are mainly focus on the general inner mechanism of
203 Ban Wang, Illuminations from the Past (Stanford: Standard University Press, 2004), 162. 204 Feifei Li, Robert Sabella and David Liu (eds.), Nanking 1937: Memory and Healing (New York: An East Gate Book, 2002), 83. 205 Feifei Li, Robert Sabella and David Liu (eds.), 187. 119
memorizing/forgetting dark history. Since this research is about Nanjing, the local context
of treating dark history and melancholic memory should be further examined and the
narrative of city gate in Nanjing is uses as an example here. During the Republic China
period, one of the ancient gate of Ming City Wall: Zhengyang Gate (正阳门) was
renamed into Guanghua Gate (光华门) in order to commemorate that the Jiang Zhe
Provinces Coalition Army first broken into the city.206 Later then in December, 1937, when the Japanese army approached Nanjing, the Chinese soldiers sacrificed their lives and tried to defense for the city. These soldiers name are not left in record, and the
Japanese army finally broke into the city, left the Guanghua Gate severely damaged. It is said that after the Japanese has occupied Nanjing, they even wrote down the word
“peace” in the ruins of the Guanghua Gate, which is very ironic.207 During the 1950s, the
ruin of Guanghua Gate was finally removed. It is even more ionic that the city wall was
built for military defense, and it was finally broken down in the war. However, the
narrative of the Guanghua Gate is still remained in the history and the memory of the city,
as Guanghua Gate is still used as a toponym. Therefore, even though the physical form of
the gate has gone long time ago, the memory of it still remained in the daily lives of
Nanjing residents. However when mentioning the toponym Guanghua Gate, people may
seldom know that this piece of dark history. The complete destruction of Guanghua Gate is not simply because people’s will to erase dark history from the memory. Of the course
206 Nanjing Ming City Wall Museum, Vicissitudes of City Walls (Nanjing: Cultural Relics Press, 2003), 70. 207 Ibid. 120
the gate itself was heavily damaged during the war, but some of the city walls were taken
away by local residents as building material, more or less due to the lack of goods after the strategic war. Therefore, the real action that leads to the lost of Guanghua Gate was in
fact done by local people. Moreover, it is a very common phenomenon that people tends
to erase the dark history from the city’s fabric. This action of erasing “broken” history
recalls the idea demonstrated in the previous section: the tradition of not celebrating ruins
in the realistic physical environment. However, this is not all the cases for Nanjing. The
ruins of Ming Palace have luckily survived in the stream of history. The ruins have been
ignored for centuries, without neither removal nor reconstruction. However, some parts
of the ruins have been demolished for traffic expansion during the Republic China period,
which is again by the local government. However, the fall of Ming Palace is not
necessarily considered as a dark history as it is a palace that has long been abandoned
during the beginning of Ming Dynasty.
In addition, history is usually considered as a more objective interpretation than
subjective memory.208 However, under certain circumstances where dispute on certain
history exists, different (or sometimes opposite) opinions would be found.
Yasukuni Shrine in Japan would be such an example. The shrine was built under the command of Emperor Meiji, and it is mainly used to consecrate died soldiers during the
wars. Among these consecrated spirits, there are also soldiers that regarded as Class-A
208 Maurice Halbwachs, The Collective Memory, 7. 121
War Criminals during the World War II. For people not only in China, but in other Asian countries that has suffered from the invasion of Japan, these soldiers are criminals that killed tons of people during the war. However, from the perspective of Japanese people
(based on the talk with Japanese tour guides), Japanese people consider these soldiers are people who are worth worshiping as they died for “protecting” their countries. Therefore, from certain stances, when history gets darker, the more controversial it may be. Also when people view as an outsider, the perspective would also change. For example there is a book name Nanjing Massacre in the Eyes of Western News Media written by Jin
Shenghong records and sorts out different news published in western countries’ media during the Nanjing Massacre and the tone of writing is very emotionless and fact-based.
Besides, there are also public media related books in Japanese, but since I do not speak
Japanese, it would be impossible to interpret. And this also exposes another dilemma about the lacking common view caused by language barrier.
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Figure 8-1: The Guanghua Gate of Nanjing was bombed by Japanese army209
209 Jiajie Feng, “Nanjing Battle: The History We Are Not Dare to Confront,” Web. 1 May 2015. http://news.163.com/special/00013DCC/NankingNanking.html. 123
Figure 8-2: On December 12th, 1937, the sixth division of Japanese army broke into the line of defense at Zhonghua Gate, and on the wall hangs the slogan of “faith to revenge for the country”.210
8.4 How to Connect Preservation with Planning
8.4.1 Realization of the limitations
Before the connection between preservation and urban planning could be talked about, the limitation brought by this dialogue have to be clearly marked out at the
210 Jiajie Feng, “Nanjing Battle: The History We Are Not Dare to Confront”. 124
beginning. First, the preservation and urban planning are originally practiced on different scales and scope. And in order to make connection, the scale of these two practices in the
discussion has to be changed. Since it would be rather more difficult to scale down urban
planning, the only doable way is to raise the scale of preservation on a regional level.
Second is to figure out what perspective this dialogue should be based on, since the
academic and secular perspectives are different from each other. For example, for
preservation experts, they may be very concern about the authenticity of the studied
object, but whether it is authentic or not does not really matter to the commoners who do
not share the similar academic background. Some other scholars may promote heritage
tourism, without noticing that a uncontrolled development-oriented tourism will
undermine the very values that attract tourist and also bring chaos to the local
residents.211 For a city that is occupied by people, I think the residents’ attitude is more precious. Therefore, making scholars superior than the local residents, or over-transferring a place to accommodate flows of tourism should both be considered as inappropriate approaches. Third, this thesis is discussing the connection of preservation and planning on the scale of a city, but this does not mean that it can only be talked on this scale. Either communal or regional scale is also valuable to be examined. Fourth, planning always consider history as a part goes to initial inventory, but ignore the fact that city-forms is a medium of cultural expression and it is not possible to fully
211 William Logan, “Introduction: Globalization, Cultural identity, and Heritage”, Disappearing Asian City: Protecting Asia's Urban Heritage in a Globalizing World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), xxi. 125
understand the built environment and societal structures without knowing the cultures.212
8.4.2 Dynamic Evolution of the City’s Fabric
The general development of culture follows a “development-decline-destruction-
recover-development-decline” pattern, and so does a city’s urban fabric.213 When the city
is flourishing, then the only direction it can go when reaches the top point is down
(decline). Therefore, it is not necessary to consider declining or destruction as bad things,
as they are just part of the dynamic cycle. In addition, people should not consider
memory erasure as a negative thing, as it is part of the dynamic loop as well. The history
of a city is just like a family tree. Like people care more about the people who are closer
to them on the family tree, as the recent memory has stronger imprint then the ancient
one. Who remember what Nanjing looks like two thousands years ago? The memory
general public really cares is the one that is closer to their time, and it is part of human nature. When people are trying to remember something, they should also prepare to
forget something. This research is talking about the idea of preserving cultural identity,
but preserving does not mean that identity would remain unchanged. New character
would come in and older one would be slowly replaced, just like new members would be kept adding to the family tree. If identity would be replaced by new ones ultimately, is that people can simply store the memory in archive and there is no need to preserve in
212 Spriro Kostof, The city Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History (Boston: Bulfinch Press, 1991), 10. 213 Delin Zhuang, and JingxiangZhang, Development and Construction History of Chinese Cities, 6. 126
physical form? This could probably be true, as identity preservation is not a must-need
for basic living. Prehistoric people will never think about the question of preserving their
identities unless their basic needs are met. Of course, as the society has developed into
current stage while most people do not need worry about basic living, I would say
memory and cultural identity are becoming more and more important. The point is, under
the present context, changing is unavoidable and it is impossible to freeze an urban fabric
in time. However, if the replacing speed is too fast, the residents would fall into panic as
there is no root of identity for them to grasp. Therefore, preserving identity, if talked from
another perspective, is an approach to control the speed of changing under a manageable
pace. For example, during each generation there are certain city memory that most people
would like to preserve, then they would band together to protect it which leave no space
for uncontrollable development to squeeze in.
Another point is that people would usually think that the erection of identity is
taken place at the developing phase of the city, like during the beginning of state founding or the economic booming period, but this is not true. Actually people will not start to look for identity until the development of a city becomes stable or start decline.
And it is also at this point that historic preservation becomes important. For example, it is after Philadelphia stopped being served as industrial and political center and experiencing content declining, then people start to look at ways to revitalize the city including
re-evaluation of local identity. Moreover, if looking at the history, the largest destruction
127
that has done to the city (like large-scale population immigrating/emigrating, burning
down the old palaces/structures, etc) is during the time of the falling of a state or the
beginning of a new state.
8.4.3 Relationship between Historic Preservation and Urban Planning
Since the development of a city’s fabric is dynamic, maybe the idea of preserving
local people’s life is not as important as we thought. Throughout the history, there is
constant immigration/emigration taken place in Nanjing, and it is arguable if the local
Nanjing residents are considered as local since many of them are moving to Nanjing from the far north of China. Also nowadays this sense of population movement is more obvious. Many people who live in Nanjing are not locals, and many younger generation moves into Nanjing in order to find better working opportunities. These people would hardly have any emotional connection with Nanjing’s past and therefore over emphasizing on local tradition sometimes would not have a better echo from public. In addition, while the society is under the circumstance of “remaking cities”, historic preservation should provide its view and expertise to look into this trend, instead of simply rejecting changes. The only thing that is unchanged is the change itself. Under the globalization context, it becomes a consequent tendency for the modernity to eclipse the differences of local cultures. As this is a problem in the developed countries, what historic preservation can do it to rethink the role of modernization and to
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construct/preserve structures and sites that will have the permanence of place the comfort of identity.214 One might be able to slow down the change, but no one can inverse the change that has already taken place.
Still because the development of a city is dynamic, the urban planning policy should also respond to this pattern. Only looking forward for more benefits, quicker development would eventually fail. The quicker a car runs, the longer time it needs to be stopped. Many metropolitan cities are experiencing unlimited expansion, and when it comes to realization that the sprawl is out of control, there is not quick way to shrink the expansion anymore. And this is how preservation helps to calm down the trend over-seeking of material benefits and grasp the generation’s identity.
Since the thesis is searching for identity preservation as a way of connecting historic preservation with urban planning, there is no mean to sacrifice the goal of either field and the best solution is to find a win-win strategy. Even it is too cruel to talk about, but under current state, preservation is never really as important as, or as beneficial as city planning. In fact, preservation is always marginalized in most economic, business and economic development discourses.215 Therefore, how to find a way to create benefit through preservation that other fields could not provide become the key to success. As a result, the value-based preservation theory advocated by the Getty Conservation Institute becomes a very important starting point. The major benefits urban planning needs is
214 Joseph Esherick, Remaking the Chinese Cities (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2000), 1. 215 Randall Mason, “Be Interested and Beware: Joining Economic Valuation and Heritage Conservation,” 308. 129
economic ones. Preservation, therefore, could take advantages of its theories and seeking
out a unique identity of the city that could be potentially used for city promotion and
marketing. Moreover, as the ecological thinking grows, the social values roots in the
preservation movements can also help to shaping healthier urban environments, which is
also an important goal of city planning.216 On the other side, transferring or rehabilitating historic sties into new uses would also bring new economic factors into the city.
Moreover, by establishing a clear identity and preserving important cultural resources, the city would experience less uncertainty when the decline phase comes. On the other hand, what preservation needs is the public’s attention and awareness toward preserving cultural resources. And by cooperating with urban planning, the policy or regulation announcements would be the perfect tool to advocate. Also by connecting with planning, preservation field would have a larger voice in the decision making process as political support and financial support go hand in hand.217
8.5 Recommendations
Recently, large scale and quick erasure of traditional residential districts in the old
city of Nanjing opens a discussion on the dilemma between modernization and
tradition.218 The city has officially announced preservation plan and its long-term master
plan also mentioned the importance of cultural heritage, but this effort is not able to stop
216 Max Page, and Randall Mason, “Rethinking the Roots of the Historic Preservation Movement,” 15. 217 Randall Mason, “Be Interested and Beware: Joining Economic Valuation and Heritage Conservation,” 309. 218 Ying Zhang, “What Has Left in Old Nanjing,” Web. 1 May 2015. http://www.huaxia.com/zhwh/whrd/whrdwz/2011/01/2258013.html. 130
the demolition and the traditional residential district has gradually disappeared in the old city, along with the residents. This phenomenon is partly due to the less efficiency when enforcing the regulations, but it is also due to the lack communication between historical preservation and urban planning process. In fact, many residential districts are demolished under the name of rehabilitation or urban revitalization, as the government thinks it is a correct strategy to upgrade the city condition and is hoping to instantly give the old city a completely new look. However, if looking at evidences of historical layering, it is not hard to find out the development of a city is an accumulative process.
The entire process of layering is more like sea wave washing the shore of beach: some of part is washed way while some are remained, and new thing swill be driven ashore. And this form of layering does not only reflect on physical built environments, but also reflects in the mechanism of intangible cultural landscape and city memory. The historical layering tells us that there is no one-night changing miracle, and the careless erasing-way of modernization is against the nature of history and may expose dangers.
With the understanding of the dynamic nature of changing, people would have an open mind to accept new conversations and their scope will not be limited by their field or expertise. Preservation of past memory is important, but it is not possible to freeze everything in time. The authenticity of preservation is necessary, but overly entangled into the judgment would ignore the value of intangible heritage. Planning for the future is crucial, but without an understanding of the past the plan would not have a
131
grounded foundation. Therefore, by throwing away prejudice, the collaboration between
historic preservation and urban planning would become possible.
In all, this research reviewed the preservation and planning, historical and
contemporary development, tangible and intangible heritage in order to make one point:
there is internally no conflict between historic preservation and planning. Preservation
and planning should work as two weights to balance and adjust the speed of evolution
and an ideal model of city development should ultimately seamlessly blend in both
practices. However, since Nanjing is not under this perfect situation, several recommendations are made here, and hopefully it would intrigue more discussion on this dialectical relationship.
1. Preservation field needs a feasible regulation and accountability system that could truly constrain the against-law actions. Currently, even with announced regulation, the preservation is more like an option, as there are not effective punishments or responsibilities put down on the developers.
2. Not only the regulation of preservation and planning should focus on what and how to preserve, but should also clarify to what extent the modification could take place.
Both preservation and planning aims at managing changes, but it should be done through soft control with more flexible criteria219. Also these criteria should keep updating
regularly, as there is no catholicon and it is important to suit the remedy to the case.
219 Randall Mason, “Theoretical and Practical Arguments for Values-Centered Preservation,” 30. 132
3. Different cultures have different value traditions and Nanjing should come out its own charter or document like Nara document to fully reflect on the local condition.
Over generalization would lead to misunderstanding of city’s fabric.
4. Both the preservation and planning should advocate to the public, since rapid development public media. However, when engaging with the public, the content should avoid over theorization, as Nanjing is still under the phase of acknowledging preservation approach.
5. Planning strategies should avoid over conceptualization and technologization as it would lower the original value of the historic sites. For example, designers usually would like to transform Ming city wall into a “greenbelt”. However, the value of Ming
City Wall does not limit to a green space as it is an important landmark, a piece of city memory.220
6. Though the general public is not the decision making sector, but their opinions
should be fully respected. This is because they are the majority who live in the urban
space, and the management system should not make them into the ignored disadvantage
group.
7. Take historic preservation as one of the major goals in the process of urban
planning. Since the ecological awareness is growing these days, it is predictable that
people’s culture growing will keep growing. When the government of Republic China
220 Shuping Chen, Urban Planning in the Ethical Concerns, 21. 133
was master planning Nanjing and prepared it as the future center of China, they can hardly predict that the new thin they were tying to create became the preservation targets just a few decades later.
9. Consider preservation as a public history and collective memory, and also as development strategy.221 Therefore, preservationists should fully participate into the planning making process in order to advocate this idea.
8. Preservation planning should integrated multiple sites in the city and create a spatial network of preservation. The method of simply drawing a boundary and preserving only the content inside is very inappropriate as it will further isolate the historic district from the rest of the urban space. Like how people conceiving a place through movement, people can only deeply perceive the root of a place cultural through a three-dimensional network system with clear layered hierarchies. 222 Moreover, the heritage sties would have larger tolerance toward changes when connecting with each other.223
221 Max Page, and Randall Mason, “Rethinking the Roots of the Historic Preservation Movement,” 16. 222 Junhua Xu, “Analysis of City Modernization and Heritage Protection”. 223 Wei Chen, Bin Hu and Xin he. “Brief Talk on the Historic and Cultural Heritage Value System Composition of China,” Web. 1 May 2015. http://big.hi138.com/wenhua/lishixue/201009/254588.asp#.VUPwXPldVbR. 134
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Appendix
Figure A-1: Southern Tang Jiangning Fu (Nanjing Historic Name) Map224
224 Yihui Liu, Capital Will (Taipei: Chengwen Press, 1983), 1596-1597. 143
Figure A-2: Song Dynasty Jian Kang (Nanjing’s historic name) Map225
Figure A-3: Yuan Dynasty Nanjing Map226
225 Yihui Liu, Capital Will, 1598-1599. 226 Yihui Liu, 1602-1603. 144
Figure A-4: 1898 Nanjing Map227
227 Shanhua Jiang (Eds.), 1898 Nanjing Historic Map (Nanjing: Nanjing Press, 2012). 145
Figure A-5: 1910 Nanjing Map228
228 Shanhua Jiang (Eds.), 1910 Nanjing Historic Map. 146
Figure A-6: 1936 Nanjing Map229
229 Wenxiong Hong and Zhanwei Pan, 1936 Nanjing Historic Map (Beijing: Xueyuan Press, 2005). 147
Figure A-7: 1946 Nanjing Map230
230 Shanhua Jiang (Eds.), 1946 Nanjing Historic Map. 148
Figure A-8: Historic Nanjing231
231 Zheng Dong, Hand-Painted Nanjing. 149
Figure A-9: Present Nanjing232
232 Zheng Dong, Hand-Painted Nanjing. 150
Index
Athens Charter 37
Ancient City Planning 19-21, 28, 66
Beijing 6, 11, 15, 22, 26, 30-33, 38, 52, 59, 65-69, 76-78, 80, 109
City Gate 52, 71, 120
Collective Memory 19, 33-34, 98, 103-107, 112, 134
Confucius’s Temple 6, 8-9, 78
Dark History 35, 70, 119-121
Destruction 6-7, 25-26, 63, 69, 70, 73, 101, 116, 119-120, 126-127
Imperial City 31, 44-45, 47-48, 70, 80
Ming City Wall 49, 52, 62, 64, 120, 133
Modernization 1, 7, 13, 31, 33, 38, 51, 68-69, 75, 101, 111, 116, 128, 130-131
Nara Document 112, 133
Preservation Planning 9-10, 32, 36, 134
Regulation 16, 37, 40, 63, 65-66, 81-82, 130-132
Seoul 11, 15, 69-70, 72-74, 76-78
Vernacular 7, 68, 76-77, 98, 102
Venice Charter 37, 112
World Heritage Site 79-80
151